The International Group of Stockholm's "12-Step Workshop Weekend" in Stockholm, Sweden

There is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time, he can take a drink without any danger.

If I just stopped drinking for a while, then I can go back and do it. Some of us think that here

I just stopped drinking for a while, I can go back, it'll be OK.

I won't drink in the weekdays. I'll just wait for the weekend.

That's all I got to do on the weekend, then it'd be different.

I'll be fine.

We make a lot of New Year's resolutions. I used to do a bunch of those,

and it's just to believe that being entirely free from the alcohol for a period of time, as though that whole period of time cleans me up or something like it gets rid of this allergy of the body, you know, as though I'm going to start all over again fresh. Some people believe that even in recovery, I used to hear that you start off right where you left off.

That's how the allergies like laying doorman or something. I also heard people say that you start off where you start off is as though you never left. Oh, that's scary. To me, that means 18 years later I'm going to take a drink. 18 plus years I go out now, it's as though I never left. 18 plus years ago.

That's spooky. You know what I was doing 18 plus years ago and it has gotten progressively worse, as though I never left? That would not be cute, and it does not sound fun.

There is the manic depressive type who is perhaps the least understood by his friends and with whom a whole chapter could be written. What's funny about that? When we start looking for the chapter, because most of us are that where's that chapter? They don't have the chapter.

What does it mean?

Because we're manic depressive. We're like always depressed. We put on like Billy Holiday and all these songs and we crying and the world is terrible. We just miserable.

Nobody gets us like Oh my God,

just you gonna be alright? Everything is horrible, the mag depressive, everything. The world is coming to an end at any moment, and I'm drinking about it too.

Why loves me? You don't love me.

I don't deserve to be here.

Why am I here? I hate you. You hate me. You'll be like oh geez. And you can have so many things going on in your life. You can have so much around you, people who love you. You can have outside things, material things, but you still miserable

and people don't get it.

Calling your boyfriend in the middle of the night crying on the phone, your ex boyfriends and stuff. You don't do that here.

Look at me like that's unusual,

you know, be making those phone calls in the middle of night after a few drinks.

Well, maybe it's just me.

I guess I need to be.

Then there are the types entirely normal and every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent and friendly people.

They give me different types to choose from. Or maybe I'm a bit of everything.

Doesn't leave a whole lot of room for me to keep making excuses, eh?

I'm normal in every respect. I'm going to work, I have my family, everything is together, everything seems put together. He's clean, everything is great. I take a drink and uh oh,

something happens.

Normal and every respect.

Again. I go back to the DUI classes. In the English classes, nobody's an alcoholic, nobody.

In the Spanish classes, everybody's an alcohol

and they go and what's your point

can necessarily approach them the same way. And the Latino community, they all know they're alcoholic and they don't get the point they like. I go to work every day. I put food on the table, money on the table. My kids have a roof over their head and clothes on their back. That's my vacation. Why are you bothering me?

I am a man

and I take care of my family and I can drink as much as I want.

I pay the bills,

that's it. And most of them in every respect, make sure that that's taken care of,

that I do take care of my family. As long as I keep that in order, then I should be OK. That's the hardest alcoholic to come into the rooms and gets over.

It's harder that way. They call them functioning Alcoholics. Where do I say I'm unmanageable in that?

How do I say that I'm managing other area of my life? My life seems to be in order just because I go out and and act a little silly and drink too much and stay at the party too long. Why is that a problem?

Oh, that's so difficult.

Be like, I don't know, you tell me why that's a problem. If it wasn't a problem, why do you wake up with remorse?

If you have it all together

what you tripping on then why do you feel so bad on the inside? Why do you feel so lonely and empty?

Why do you get uncomfortable after work that you need to stop by the bar? Then

if it ain't such a big deal, something's going on,

why does even though your wife and your children are being taken care of, they look at you the way they do?

Don't you think they should be happy since everything is being taken care of, right? What's going on?

Why do you think you need to be here? And you need help if your life is such an order,

you just drank a little bit too much. You got to be kidding me. That's what always gets me about people in the rooms of alcohol. It's anonymous. We were talking about high bottoms, low bottoms. I'm like, we all just have a bottom.

Does it matter to me if your life was in order? That doesn't interest me in any way.

We're great at putting up a facade.

The bottom is on the inside, the darkness is on the inside. It's what's happening to me within me, not so much what's going on outside of me. Some people listen to my story and say, oh, how tragic. I'm not a movie.

We're alcoholic.

The tragedy of my story has nothing to do with anything.

It has to do with what was going on with me on the inside. I could have still kept living like that and thought it was perfectly fine. Is what started happening here that made it difficult. And the same thing that was happening to me on the inside, despite the abuse and all the horrific, you know, stuff that I'm talking about, is the same thing that's happening to the person who has a job, who has a family, who have their life together. We both feel the same way. We feel dirty and ugly and lonely,

lost. That's what binds us together. That's what brings a group together that doesn't normally mix,

has nothing to do. If you have a job and I don't, nothing, you have a car I don't. That's not what we're here to talk about.

How do we feel when we say not today and we do it anyway?

How do we feel that whatever we find to be demoralizing in our own life? So for somebody, it could just be they didn't bring home the check that night. And for me, it could have been selling my body. It doesn't matter. It's how we both felt when you didn't bring the check and I sold my body. I felt horrible because I didn't want to do that. I wanted to bring the check home and I didn't want to sell my body

so you can look at me and go, Oh my God, she sold her body. How horrible. You didn't bring a check home.

Do you know what I'm saying? My story ain't worse than yours. You felt bad not bringing the check home and I felt bad. We just felt bad. And why do we feel bad when we want to do better?

Because we can't.

That's where I'm powerless and my life is unmanageable. Is that a hard pill to swallow? Absolutely. Who wants to admit complete defeat? Not me,

not me. So if you be new or you be old and you're struggling and you're fighting the fact that you don't want to admit defeat, you're not alone. None of us do. You ain't talking about nothing.

Which type am I? Any questions? So far we all questions,

I like questions, yes. So do you speak about,

excuse me like that, my emotional life

with some of these people who have everything on the outside? That's the way you understand my life. Emotional life?

Yep. What's your experience?

What was happening?

Just complete chaos, not being able to understand anything about how anything worked on the outside of other people relations and you know

of this planet

out to the nature

and when you drank what would happen

completely party and then when the party was over,

it must be it must be. It was it would be scary for me because I don't want the party to end. Then

I don't want the party to end.

That's why I'm going. Where's everybody going? I know it's Sunday,

but if the party ends and I'm going to be feeling terrible again,

I become restless, irritable and discontent and I don't want to do that. That's why I'm willing to go to any lengths to get the next one. I need the ease and comfort because I feel bad. I like the effect. We get too caught up in thinking that I get to determine if I'm an alcoholic based on my outside.

That's not what's really unmanageable.

Those are the consequences of what's going on on the inside. Somebody had a hand up back there. Did I see a hand up? No,

no, yeah. No. Any more questions? Yeah. Well, I actually have a question on the text because this was one place in the book where I released, you know, finding the places that I didn't recognize myself or, you know, couldn't relate to. Of course, in the beginning of my sobriety and studying this text, it was, you know why he writes the doctor. He writes

men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. Why doesn't say, you know, these men, women or alcoholic men and women? Because he says it asks just that sentence, which starts a new, you know, a new.

Yeah, exactly.

To me, it sounds like this is for everybody, and that's how I see the world. Because I can't imagine not. Yeah, I just can't even relate to the idea of not drinking because of that. So I think that everybody thinks like that. I was just always. Why is he saying men and women in such a way that it sounds like it's absolutely everybody

of the alcohol, so it sounds he's putting his eye. Basically, men and women just drink because they like the effect.

I can see that.

I know I like the effect, but I've seen other men and women who don't drink for the effect. And there's so many where, I mean, alcohol, they call it spirits, right? It does something. There's some people who had a hard day at work and they like to take the edge off by having. So that's an effect where they got to just have a drink and relax,

helps them to relax and take it easy. That's happened.

I like, I want to get tipsy, I want to get loaded.

I do. I want to feel nice. I don't want to be here. I don't drink and want to be present for the experience I'm looking to check out. I'm looking to disappear when I drink. I essentially am drinking because something needs to happen to me. That's why. If it doesn't I get mad. Don't give me a pill that don't work.

No, no, no. Don't pass me a drink that doesn't get me nice. Please don't do that. To me.

That's very upsetting.

It's very disturbing. If I drink and I don't feel it, I get really angry. You ever heard that? You ever heard the thing that they say of an alcoholic dies? You take their brain, put it in a jar of alcohol, You're here.

That's sigh of relief. Finally,

we wonder why we get sober. We get like this because we we try to find that relief. You had your hand up

like this difference between me and and person who isn't an alcoholic.

The lights. In fact, he said I want that effect no matter what I I drank while breastfeeding because I like the infection. I I drank while I was pregnant because I liked the effect. I need it. It's it was love of my life. I could have lived without it. I know a lot of people that can have one glass of wine and they like the effect, but they don't drink no matter what. They don't drink no matter what it costs them. They don't miss their kids in graduation.

They don't lose their jobs because they like the effect, because it isn't that doesn't taste that good, you know. So I, I think for me, that's the difference. I have friends that like, you know, that small buzz or or or they don't think that 2nd and the 3rd or the 10th flat or they don't go on on on a week long drinking, you know, fighting like that.

What's interesting is that I may like the effect,

I take the drink to get that effect, but what happens to me that's different from the person who maybe likes that buzz is I have the allergy of the body. So now the buzz came and left and I'm still there. I got the books. It's not even about a buzz anymore. The buzz is over.

I'm still drinking. I'm not feeling no buzz. I'm not feeling nothing. My head's pounding. I'm sick to my stomach, but I'm still drinking.

I'm still doing it. The effect has been gone. It's been gone and I'm chasing that effect again. I'm chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, constantly chasing. I want the effect. I want the effect. And then the allergy is doing something else altogether different. Oh, what a vicious cycle. It took a alcoholic torture,

but I keep doing it and I keep doing. I keep doing, I keep doing, I keep doing, I keep doing, I keep doing it. Never ending, never ending, never ending. That's my experience.

Find yours.

I always say within the pages they told me which type am I? Is that me? Did that happen to me? Was that my experience? If what they're talking about is that true,

do I identify with that? If I do, then perhaps maybe I'm an alcoholic. Oh, what a concept.

Oh, how scary that is.

But for some reason, these people, these thousands of men and women that have recovered,

in their experience, they have found that to be true. And as a result of them admitting their powerlessness and unmanageability, they have found a new way of life.

Then that's something.

Is there freedom IN that? Is it the possibility that if I admit such a thing, if I get honest with myself for the first time in my life, that just maybe this is true? Based on my experience, then could it be that there's hope for me 'cause I don't know about you, but I never did that one before. I never admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life was unmanageable.

I never got honest enough to see that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't do it.

I never did that one.

I did everything else but that.

I did everything else with that. I found that fascinating

that these people admitted this, they got honest about it and all of a sudden they recovered.

They no longer had to do what I've been doing,

swearing off forever. They weren't doing that anymore.

They weren't doing this vicious cycle anymore. They weren't waking up with remorse like I had been.

All they did was admit

that I'm powerless, that I have this allergy, this phenomenon of craving. There's something going on that's beyond me, that as much as I want it to be different, it ain't. That's all they did.

Something else is going on here beyond me.

I never thought of that. Never.

What a relief.

Is it possible

that no matter what combination I'm finding, I'm not going to find the right one? I don't have the key to this, but maybe these people do.

That's how I saw it. And you know what? It couldn't hurt. You know, I can always go back to what I used to do before.

Some part of me always knew that

the door is never locked.

I can always go back to that it will be waiting for me has gone nowhere.

I can go back to the same bar in the same bar stool. I'm

I'm sure it'll be right there. That same cheap leather chair and bar stool. Dirty nasty rugs. Dim light place is still there. And if that's not there, there's another one just like it.

I can always go back to my lonely life.

How many people been in and out of the rooms? They go there for me.

So let me take a look and say, am I alcoholic?

Can I admit that?

Can I admit that I have this allergy and this phenomenon of craving and that the only thing that's going to help me is a psychic change,

a spiritual experience?

And then I'm one of these types

Later on. They talk about Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

the insanity. I do the same things over and over and over again and never changes.

I like the jaywalker that starts talking about later on and more about alcoholism. The person who goes out into the cars and kept crossing the streets without looking, kept crossing the street without looking, kept getting hit and kept saying I'm not going to do it, turn around and did it again.

Am I that guy?

Do I want to admit that?

Maybe not, but I have to.

I have to if I want the possibility of something finally being different.

Haven't I not been praying for it? Even to a God that I don't believe in.

How many times I asked in some small way, in some weird kind of prayer, for it to be different?

How many times did I do that? And now something is different and I'm scared.

I have a disease that tells me don't listen to those people.

You can manage and control.

Sure, you haven't been able to do it for the last 20 years,

but we can figure it out together.

I love alcoholism. That's why they told me not to listen to my head, because my disease was centered in my thinking, which is the obsession of the mind.

It begins with the obsession.

My head tells me it's going to be different this time.

Even though it hasn't been all these years. This time it is going to be different. Really it will. It's going to be.

We had a couple of times when it was different. Do you remember that time?

And I don't know how many times I told you not to hang out there. You need to move to a whole of the country.

I told you that job is killing you.

It's that job.

The job gets you every time you keep going back there.

It starts and it begin. It really begins with the obsession. And when we get sober, that obsession starts doing double time

it it starts doing push-ups. I remember the speaker used to have cracking up. He said he would set it seems like when he went to sleep, he woke up. His disease was waiting for him at the at the headboard looking down. I'm going. Are you up yet?

All right, Look like what I was talking about last night. Waiting for you to get up. Check this out. This is what we're going to do today.

Admitted we were powerless over alcohol in our lives have become unmanageable. I got a couple of minutes. I think I we're going to take a, we're going to go to lunch here.

OK, let me do this one and step one, I want to read this to you.

Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one. Of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have worked our minds. This is such an obsession for destructive drinking that only enact the Providence can remove it from us.

No other kind of bank bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol now becomes this repetitious creditor bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist his demands. Once the stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete.

But upon entering AA, we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps towards liberation and strength. Our admission of personal powerlessness finally turns out to be the firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives can be built.

We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins a A unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all of his consequences. Until he so humbles himself. His sobriety, if any, would be

quite precocious. Precarious

of real happiness, he will find none at all.

That's like a promise, yo.

I don't know, man. These people would get me. I was like, ooh,

they scared me. I was like, Oh my God.

Proven beyond doubt by any immense experience. This is one of the facts of a day's life.

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole society has sprung and flowered. Oh I love that.

Then towards the end it's on the 12 and 12. Why all this insistence of every A A must hit bottom first?

The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice CAA program unless they hit bottom

for practicing a age remaining. Remaining 11 steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking.

Who wishes to be vigorously honest and tolerant? Not me. Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done. Oh no,

Who cares anything about a higher power? I know. Not me. I'm my higher power,

let alone meditation and prayer. Yucky

who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry a as message to the next sufferer.

I just think about I want to get on no plane and go to Sweden.

I'm sorry. You may love your country, but I've never been here. I don't want to

play. That was 12 hours. That's a lot of hours. That's a long time.

I couldn't smoke a cigarette,

I wasn't in first class and I have a bed.

It's a long time.

It's cold

at all times. I come out here in January.

I

I like sunny California.

I walk around with a little skirt, little tank top and flip flops.

No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect

unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive

himself.

That's why I got on a plane. That's why I found some hat and some gloves and some boots

and got out here

and somebody gave me Nicorette or something for the plane and I got munchies and some twisty things.

Why? Cuz I need to do these things in order to stay alive.

To stay alive. It doesn't say just to not drink, to stay alive

Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to a A. It says under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to AA people. Did we just stop by here for a cute little moment? We are driven into a A. People talk about these horrific stories and people don't have bad stories. I'm like, if you in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, you got a bad story because we're driven to a A unless you got the nudge from the judge.

Oh, you're doing it because of your family and we plant the seed and you keep coming back. You're welcome too.

But the ones who come here are driven, it says driven into a A. You run up in here that things things must have been really bad.

You don't come here 'cause you had a couple of too many martinis. I'm sorry

that cracks me. All knows me I just drank a little too much. I went to AA please.

Then you ain't no real alcoholic. You just tripping for the moment. A real alcoholic has to be driven. It just described to me why

I have this obsession in mind, this allergy of the body. I'm doing it despite the consequences. I'm burning bridges, I have remorse. Problems are happening in my life. I can't manage and control what's going on around me. I feel bad, I feel horrible. I do these nasty things. I don't have good intentions. I don't. My intentions are well, but they turn around worse at you. Driven in a A I'm sorry

I had too many drinks. I went to a A

I go. You're doing a term paper.

Real Alcoholics have to be driven up in here.

We're survivors, man. We we push stuff to the end. Boy, do you know what I'm saying? You could cut me up in a million pieces. I'll find another arm.

I'll limp over there. Everyone get my drink shoe

be like like flipper. I don't care.

Oh Lord, I gotta finish. And there we discover the fatal nature of our situation. We're driven into AA. And what's so interesting, it says we discover when I get here,

there we discover the true nature.

So that's why when you're new, we tell you you don't know nothing.

People so sensitive

you don't know anything 'cause you don't know the true nature. You were just driven up in here. You're clueless. You can't tell the truth from the fault. You can't differentiate. Your lenses are crooked, your mind is warped. You can't figure this out. You think your life is a normal one. You don't need discover your true nature when you get here.

It's like crack. So you know. Well, basically I think my drinking has something. I'll be quiet.

You don't know. You are clueless.

Then and only then do we become as open minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us. I'm willing to do anything to lift the obsession.

It's the obsession and the allergy of the body that's killing me. And later we're going to find we put the plug in the jug

and I suffer from a spiritual malady.

The remaining steps, if you realize they don't talk about alcohol no more, do you notice that they already mentioned alcohol in the first step?

After that we start talking about something else altogether. Oh, I thought my problem was just drinking.

Oh shucks,

we're gonna have fun after lunch on that one. Geez, I just thought I had to just stop drinking. Oh no, we're going to talk about the rest is irritability and discontentment,

so that if that's addressed, I don't need to seek the ease and comfort that comes from the first few drinks. Ah,

in there something

I was impressed with people in a a not only were they sober, they didn't, they weren't killing themselves or somebody else. That's what impressed me. Oh, you're not killing yourself or somebody else. That's impressive

'cause when I'm not drinking, I want to kill somebody else and myself.

That means you all got something going on here. I love it. I hope that's helpful. Real quick before we go to, we're going to do 7th Tradition. But any questions? I went too fast trying to do it in a day, you know. But is everybody OK? Think about it,

we come back. Please ask me this is for you. Hope that you understand in the way you need to or speak amongst each other. I don't know how you do in crowds, but

hopefully you can get it. So we doing the 7th tradition. Yes, Amanda, thank you.