The Eastside Group's 3rd anniversary in Fort Worth, TX

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Mark Houston. I'm an alcoholic

and my sobriety date is October the 19th of 1982 and I had nothing to do with that date.

It's interesting. The only thing we have to do perfect, which is not drink, we don't have any power to do

on our own without God and awareness, conscious contact.

So that's when I realized that my journey in sobriety got a lot simpler. I missed, I missed for a long time that there's a course of action that I, that I take that allows me to experience a power which does for me what I cannot do for myself. There's nothing worse than being an A a thinking you're having something to do with staying sober.

That really places a lot of responsibility on your shoulders that you probably don't want it. You don't want to carry your or handle

what a fabulous place to they have a meeting and I monasteries and churches are two places I love to visit and immediately when I when I go in those places, part of me just

and they used to be places I was extremely uncomfortable in

that had a lot to do with how I was living my life. Funny how you get changed over the over the years. I

I've been on a hiatus from speaking for almost two years.

Dino is a good beggar, so

he called in some markers that I owed him and I said sure, I'll come over and share some of my experience at at the anniversary. So it's good to be here. Good to see some of you I haven't seen for a while.

You know,

it's a funny thing about God in this power right around. I'm thinking about two years ago.

Well, let me let me back up a minute. A year and a half ago I was up in Colorado seeing some pals of mine and doing some business and and that's where I got sober in both my parents are passed away and and I went out to to their gravesite to pay respects, took along some flowers and

my dad died first. He died of alcoholism in 1985,

so they buried him in the VA cemetery. And this gives you some idea of of my family I came from is not only my mother but any animal that died thereafter. They all want to be cremated, just dumped on top of him.

And so there's my mother and I believe three dogs and three cats all scattered on top of him. And so it's like a family reunion when I go visit the grave site. But I,

and of course, the VA, if you ever gone to VA cemetery, you got to be hooked up to find a grave in those places.

So any rate, though, I, I get up there and I, I spend a little time and, and for me, it was

thankfulness really to them for raising me and for their part in my life,

which was a lot different than the place I came to when I came to a a many years ago. And you know how we live in the second column and it's everyone else's fault, etcetera, right? They'd only raised me different, blah, blah, blah. That sad story that we drank behind for so long, but that that left me many, many years ago. At any rate, I, I was there and, and you know, I was struck by,

you know, they have a birth date and a death date and this, this dash.

And what I was struck by is that the dash is symbolic of how I've lived my life and that, and that in reality,

when I die, this body dies

because the eye never dies. When this body dies, all that is ever going to get left behind that has any value is memories

of how I contribute in what I did in people's lives. And nothing else has any value. There's no homes, there's no cars, there's no money, there's nothing. What are you really left with? And So what out of that it came a came a great question for me is what what am I doing with my dash? What am I doing with my dash? What have I done with my dash? When I look at my dash

there seems to be 4 very distinct periods of time.

Bert the 16 because at 16 I took my first drink. That was one aspect,

16 to 36. And at 36, I was separated from alcohol by a power

that I was ambivalent about,

which I'll call God.

But I'm far more concerned with the experience of the power behind the name. You understand, not, not concerned about the name. I need an experience with the power behind the name, whatever the name is. A lot of people have a lot of different names. I long ago got free of getting hung up on the name. And so there's that period of time. Then there's my first ten years in Alcoholics Anonymous,

and that's another part of the dash. And between my 9th and 10th year, my mind drove me insane and I wound up in

psychiatric hospital. I'll talk a little bit about that in case any of you got that going on. I might be able to save you from that journey, maybe not, I don't know.

You can become so identified with your mind and listen to its talk that it'll drive you insane, which is exactly what happened to me.

And then there's the the last part of the dash really is from my 10th year of sobriety on. I really it was July of 1991 in which

sitting in that nut house, I said the third step from the very bottom of my heart and I have been living that experience every since. I don't know as if there will be any more segments in the remainder of my life in terms of my dash in that having really

surrendered to the essence of the third step, which is my life is no longer my business.

It feels like my life is an inward process. In one place is no better than the other. They're all just a little different. But at the center of it all is this incredible loving God that exists within me and exists outside and exists in you. And all is well, regardless of my life situation, which is,

you know, I was, I was talking to a friend the other day, those of you who have some time

because you know, time will shape you.

Time sober will change you

and shape you. And if you're like me, because I'm in my 23rd year without, without a drink. And so you have this new person sitting across from you and

they ask you things like, well, what's going to happen to me? And I mean, how do you even begin to respond to that?

Oh, nothing much. Things like your life is no longer going to be your business, but as long as you think it's your business, you're going to suffer. But that's probably going to take you 10 years,

you know? Then one day you'll quit.

You know

every belief system you currently now have in new ones you accumulate along the way have to be shattered and smashed for you'll ever get a piece. That may take a long time too.

You know, you just, you don't keep yourself sober. You're going to seek a power that does that for you. So you have nothing to do with it. I mean, just how do you? And because when you have time and you look back, you realize that all that is true.

You know, those of you, if you you're in that period of sobriety from like early sobriety up to five years within we all have our periods of time. We really know a lot

and we really want to impress upon our groups that we know a lot.

Now, if you to ask me outside of what I said to you probably in a meeting those first five years, how the rest of my life is doing, we don't want to go there,

but I had all this knowledge. And I mean, how do you it's how do you transmit that? You know, how do you, well, you transmit it a day at a time and a page at a time. And we're going to start this journey. And that's how you, you know, how you transmit that, that process, that process of the steps.

I was born and raised back in the Midwest back in I was one of four boys.

My dad did die alcoholism 1986. What growing up in that dynamic, I

I made some decisions about drinking that I wasn't going to drink. And that changed when I was 16. And in hindsight, that changed because of how was experiencing myself. Here was the other thing that that again, let's go back to new people. There's a phrase that I work with because it describes so much of me and my life experience. And the phrase is I'm asleep, dreaming. I'm awake.

And it's this idea that I think because my eyes are open and I'm looking at you, that I'm awake

and I look at my life and I realize how true that is, that I was a sleep dream and I was awakened and when I got separated from alcohol and sent a A because I had nothing to do with any of them. And the truth is, if you all look at your life, you didn't either. I love it. And people say, well, I came to a A and I did this and I did that. And I think really.

Really. Yeah.

I work with chronic relapses all the time. I I have to assume that I'm being punished for past lives in which I was not a very nice man,

because they're really fun.

You know I'm only 31 but they turned you my hair white

because there are four favorite words or I know and yes, but and ease. It's just they know more about the steps than you ever thought of knowing. And how long you sober now will 2 days.

But

and I'll say to him, so when was the last time you were separated from alcohol? And they said well, a month ago, how long did you have? Well, I had three weeks. So I said, do you think you were involved with your last relapse? Well, of course.

And I think to myself how sad that they've been around all this time and they actually think that they're choosing to go take a drink of alcohol, see, because my experience is if you're a real alcoholic and if you're what the big book says and you're like me at all, when I got up in the morning,

it chose me. And I didn't have any say in that. And once I took a drink, it decided when to let go.

There's nothing worse than thinking you're involved with all that. See, now other people who are in our lives realize there's something a little awry about us.

We can't see it

go on a week Bender and and you come out of that fog and you get a day or two and you're starting to feel a little better and you look back and you're analyzing. There was one little thing I probably missed in there. I didn't coat my stomach enough for the I mean, whatever that that's how we do

because this idea of controlling and enjoying my drinking, if one was happening, the other wasn't. We've all been in placed in positions we had to control. Like if you're going to a company function,

so you're looking at your clock, as you know, you don't want to drink too much there because you like this job and this paycheck. So you're having to control, but you can't wait till you get out of there. So if I had that control ever, I could never enjoy. Then the other side of it is, is once I let it go because of a phenomenon called craving, it took me way past enjoyment.

You know, the tragedy of being a real alcoholic is this. This place that alcohol took me to

always happened within one to three drinks.

One to three drinks, I'd be in that place, you know that place.

Ease, comfort, present to the moment. You're not worrying too much about the Future Past. It's just the past. You're pretty present to what's going on.

Three drinks, one to three. But because of a phenomenon called craving, I would go way, way, way, way past that over and over. And in hindsight, when I look back over my drinking, my whole deal was about I need to go back to that place again. I was at my Home group this morning. It's the Clean Air Group in Dallas, TX and in particular a men's.

It's a men's meeting. I was reflecting on something this morning.

I I don't know what it is about US men, but when you put women in the room with us, dishonest dishonesty starts to creep into our sharing.

And the longer I'm sober, the more the greater than necessity for me to be authentic with myself and with you is. And like in the men's meeting this morning, there was a lot of authenticity going on in that meeting that if you ladies have been present, none of it would have been going on.

And that's by the way, that's not about you. That's about a conditioning that men are given

this idea that that we somehow have to present ourselves in a certain way in order to be the acceptable to you. You know, 'cause heaven forbid, we've got to be acceptable to you, don't we? But that is, that is my Home group and I enjoy that. And I might even be some of you in here that have some

ideas about, let's see, what would that sound like? Oh, that's not a real a, a meeting because has more than one requirement. That would be a, something someone might say about that. And to you people, I say, put our name in column one, put what you resent in column two, and solve your problem 'cause we don't have one.

But. And I go to a bunch of meetings outside of that. But it's the honesty, the rigorous honesty.

Longer I'm sober, last two years. When I think about it, the concept of rigorous honesty went to a whole, whole new level.

So let's go back to those first 16 years. I can only tell you in hindsight how I experienced myself and I am so grateful that I took a drink alcohol at 16.

And the way I experience myself, and I'll use a lot of the words in the in the big book, the fabric of my being was interwoven with fear. And I didn't even know it was fear.

It was just this sense of

I don't even impending doom is a word we hear a lot, but it wasn't even that.

Anxiety maybe is a better word in all places at all times and I just couldn't measure up. It was further complicated by the fact I matured very, very late and I got a high school. I was like 5-6 and about 140 lbs. So I had virtually no athletic ability whatsoever. That was very important back then. So I gravitated to things like speech and drama and all the great things. That is great preparation. If you're real alcoholic, that's got

off this game for years. When I look back,

women scared me to death.

Just just all of that. Those you, you, you can relate. It wasn't a question. Also, by the way, of not fitting in because like a good alcoholic, I was a comedian even back then and I graduated from high school 1964.

But even back then you had three different classes of people back in the small town in Iowa, 4500 people you still had, you had the upper class, middle class and lower class, right? And that's all based on income for the most part.

And I'd move in all three, become a chameleon, step in here, step in here, step in here. I started doing that very, very early on. 7th grade is when I started doing that. Didn't even know I was doing that survival mechanism, you know.

And finally, when the summer when prior to junior high school, I guess I must have just had all the fun I could stand. And to this day I I still remember my first few beers were a Miller ice cold Miller in a hot day back in Iowa. And it changed and transformed this internal condition. Big book calls it a spirituality. Call it what you will. I just know that something very dramatic happened within me

that does not happen to normal drinkers. When I describe the epiphany that I had behind alcohol, normal people, people just look at me and they have no frame of reference.

You know, that kind of stuff happened to them in churches, you know, stuff like that. But I described what I drink alcohol did to me, and they have no idea. They just have no idea the fact that it produced instantaneous ease and comfort,

that it was a social lubricant, that all these fears seemed to dissipate at least for periods of time and that Mark was OK with Mark just for a while.

And you want to take that away from me? I do not believe so. That's not going to happen. I mean, when I work with with people,

and again, it's historically, it's people with a lot of relapse history, I really spend a bunch of time with them on the effect produced by alcohol.

And one of the reasons that I do that is because we have suffered horrendous consequences. I suffered horrendous consequences. Every alcoholic I've ever met behind drink and I kept going back to drink. Now there had to be a reason outside of the insanity. The first drink and the reason that I've discovered is what alcohol did for me and to me,

and my personal experience is,

is if I'm living my life sober and how I'm living my life, that does not do the same thing to me and through me, I will drink again. Which is why, again, how do you tell this to a new person? The elimination of alcohol is but a beginning.

How many of you got like a year or less? Raise your hand.

Couple

like me. I suspect you came to A because you thought you had a problem with alcohol.

CAA, they y'all tricked me. See

See, I go to treatment in 1982 and I'm literally dead. You know weighed about 250. I had brain damage, kidney damage, liver damage, everything I owns in this duffel bag

really doing well and

go to AE and by then I drank so much and I was so damaged. My own response? Oh good. So I go into a A and I'm telling myself the reason I'm going to as I travel with alcohol.

Well, if any of you got any experience with the big book,

but they're cruel. They don't tell you this to like somewhere around page 6263 in one tiny little sentence they say, oh, by the way, alcohol is not your problem. Markets a symptom. Excuse me, The name of this place is called Alcoholics Anonymous,

No. And see, by then you're right up to making a third step decision. What are you going to do, leave?

That's confusing. See. So if you're new and you got a year or less, I understand you think you're new because you got a problem with alcohol. You don't. It's a symptom. It's a symptom, you know, and the problem that I had begin to manifest very, very early in my life, in that first dash. And when I took a drink, it treated the problem.

And I have learned over the years, if I don't continue to do some things to keep myself in fit spiritual condition, I have a mind that's going to take me back to the to the only thing outside of Fitzpatrick condition that ever treated that thing that goes on in me and goes on in every alcoholic I've ever known. You know,

which is probably why our big book says, Mark, you cannot rest on your laurels. Laurels is what I did yesterday.

Yesterday had nothing to do with what happened to me once I got up this morning.

When I got up this morning, I did exactly what my big book

tells me that I need to do. I spent some time in prayer, pages 84 through 88, rereading these instructions again about what I need to do to stay in fit spiritual condition. And it gives me a whole bunch of prayers in there. Things like freedom from self will not a bad prayer to work with.

If I have to make a if I have to make a decision, I ask God for inspiration. Intuition

reminds me of a whole bunch of things to practice when I left my home today because you know, there's I'm a single man and I have my cat hobo. And as far as I know I haven't had to make amends to him. So when I'm home and I'm starting my day out work, the slate's clean. But the minute I walk out that door and you got my kind of mind if I don't have these tools in place, we got trouble. It was starting to pull out my apartment. The guys coming in just a little too tight. And this mind says

you now have a concealed weapon permit. You could pull a gun and remind him he needs to move over, right?

That's right. That's after an hour prayer meditation.

I told you I'm gonna be authentic. I'm gonna be authentic.

Happened two days ago.

How do you do that? You know behind this little old blue haired, a blue haired. You all know what a blue haired lady is, right?

Probably a little older, driving a big long Cadillac. Speed limits 45 and she's doing about 20. Can't see over the wheel.

I'm behind and there's then there's another car to her left and you can't move. You can't get it wrong. You know, I've been meditating and I'm pretty hooked up and this voice just all of a sudden switched to, I wish I had a big truck. I'd run that woman over so I'd get I'd get her. And it's like, whoa, where did that come? I haven't even gotten to Starbucks

and this is going on right now. I'm in my 23rd year right?

We are not like normal people, we never will be. Thank God I have all these tools So what they do? God, please remove that thought about me hurting that little old lady who doesn't know I even exist

who's probably having a great day.

And the insanity is I don't even have to be anywhere to specific time. It was just somebody was blocking my path. You know how we are.

You ask God, please remove this thought. Turn, turn, thy will be done. OK, I'm calm again, I'm breathing mindfulness, going to Starbucks, order some coffee and go on back down the the road again. But all those tools are designed to keep me in fit spiritual condition so that it, the thing the book calls the spirituality does not resurface in my life and make me so disused, so uncomfortable,

that my mind one day takes me to a strange middle blank spot and says, let's go drink.

Let's go treat. What's really going on with you, Mark?

You know, in my experience about that condition is, quite frankly, it doesn't even seem to make much difference whether my life situation is fabulous or not. You know, if you're a real alcoholic and spending time, look at your first step. My experience told me I drank on top of the world and I drank on the bottom and I drank when I had the job and I drank when I didn't, and I drank when she stayed and I drank when she left.

It didn't matter. You know, there just comes a time that there's a part of me that has to get treated with something.

So I took that first drink when I was 16 and it treated what the big book calls the spiritual melody gave me some ease and comfort. And I drank for 20 more years. And I am very, very grateful that I had alcohol for those 20 years. I'll give you an idea of how bad it, it was within me. When I was 23 years old, I I had graduated from high school.

I had gone to college. I kept switching majors a lot. In hindsight, it's because

I like to drink and party.

And at that time there was this little thing going on called the Vietnam War. And they had the draft in.

And what finally happens at that time, I'd switch majors so many times. I was on my 6th year and I wasn't any closer to graduating. And they said we're drafting you. And they did. And and the see, this is how, this is how crazy I was. I was moving toward getting a degree to be a teacher. And if you were a teacher at that time, you were given a 4F and didn't have to go, right?

But

not us. And so I get drafted and I get sent over there. And then I come back and I finish up college, get married, rode off to San Francisco, and I get my first real job in the world working for a major insurance company as a claims adjuster. Big Bonneville company car. This was in 1972. I'm making $650 a month. That was a lot of money. Then this big company car, me and my wife living in a beautiful apartment right on the beach,

Alameda, right outside San Francisco and Oakland.

You know, I mean, it was, I had arrived. It was, it was, it was a sweet deal.

And in hindsight, looking back, I I know what started to happen. Was

it this thing going on in me? This, this fear at the fabric of my being and all the internal dialogue that subsequently goes along with that,

you know, that voice in particular, I think that says, I think most of us can relate to is you don't belong with any of these people and they are going to find out about you. That voice that regardless of how successful you are, that voice, that voice got active and I started to have an an I realize they didn't even have a term for it. Then I started to have anxiety attacks. They at the most inopportune times, like prior to an evaluation of my performance,

prior to a presentation to a roomful of people.

And of course that didn't look good. So I had to do some things to treat that condition. And so that's called drinking. Then later that was compounded by other chemical cocktails,

all of which were designed again to treat it. This fear. Fear is the biggest thing I can think of because many things manifested, but fear at the very fabric of my being.

Almost when I look back, almost a fear and a shame of justice being just my existence

and having to drink to treat that make that go away. And I again, I'd like to tell you, I know how all that showed up, but it but it didn't. And so those things what I would do, I would go, I was working out a lot. Then I, I, as you can tell, I grew a little above the 5-6.

I remember one time I go to emergency room. I mean, I think I'm dying from this anxiety attack, fear attack, let's call it what it is.

And I go in and you know, my blood pressure is like 100 / 70. I weigh 180 lbs. I'm carved out of granite. I got a pulse rate like 52. And the guy said, excuse me,

I don't know where you're here. You're in. Everyone would like to be in health. You're in. I can't help you. Goodbye.

So I go drink. And then all of a sudden, seeing the idea that drinking, drinking begins to treat that. And just like the Big Book says, my drinking took on enormous proportions.

I had to. I had to drink more and more to treat it, to treat it series of events. I wound up relocating to Portland, OR. That was the beginning of the end of the marriage. As I begin to drink more than there was, the compromising of all my values and all my morals.

I believe that goes along with alcoholism along the way. Whether it's not giving your employer a fair day's work, cheating on your taxes, cheating on your wife. I don't care if you drank like I drink. At some point in time you're going to get taken down that path. Taken down the path, not choice.

I got taken down that path. That's the path you go down if you're a real alcoholic. You compromise every value system you've ever been raised with.

So all of that began to happen and that marriage ended. Then I wound up going up to Seattle, WA for two years and then up to Alaska, and that was the beginning of the end. Lived in Alaska for about a year,

finally got let go and really my last four years prior to getting sober I worked at various jobs, worked everything from the oil patch to you name it. And finally when I was sober I was working as an Orient in a nursing home. Right in the great Jacqueline story, cleaning up human feces for a living

and

take taking a pipe to 1/5 of a key and to work with me every day. And there was a one room and it had eight to 10 older men in it. And because of my size, they let me take care of those men, change their pampers, give them baths, do all that other kind of stuff. They didn't mind my drinking. They found me to be quite entertaining

and and that's, you know, that's what I did. And then there was a series of events that and as I was telling Jeremy and I were talking on the way over here,

I've been sponsoring Jeremy for a while. And he he talked about when he was going to come over and do his fifth step with me. And he, he said he realized later that he had, he had some real naive ideas about me. Like I was going to Co endorse a lot of what his inventory had shown him and say, you know, don't do that stuff again. Well, that isn't what happened is I let him

see through a series of questions. He was like a tornado worn through the lives of others,

and that it wasn't OK, wasn't anything about it was OK. And I shattered him right down the middle. And because that's what has to happen, as far as I can tell, when an inventory is written in a fifth step.

You look at the I was telling him this morning, an idea came to me what I'm going to do from now on, before I listen to a fifth step, I'm going to write The Weather Channel. I'm going to get about 10 minute clips of the worst damage by tornadoes that you ever see. And before I do the 5th step, I'm going to play that for 10 minutes. And I'm going to say, if your inventory does not show us, this is what you do to people, you need to leave and go rewrite it. We're not kind when we drink because we're not ever thinking about anyone else. And I was a tornado.

I, when I, when I sobered up, there wasn't anybody or anything in my life that wanted to have anything to do with me, nor should they have had anything to do to me. Every lie that you could tell, I had told, you know, we, I didn't realize this to have been sober a long time. This has to do with the men's

and the book does not specifically say this, but the biggest, one of the biggest ways in which I harm humans who cared about me, and I've done this sober, is I robbed them of emotional security.

Emotional security. And I work in the field of chemical dependency

and I get to interact with this all the time. We get these clients, these chronic relapsers,

of course, they're just oblivious. They're just doing what they're doing. And these families, bless their hearts, they're crazy as pet coons. Just crazy. We've sucked all the life and joy out of them. I've, I've had mothers say this to me

and keep in mind their son or daughters, like in their 40s, right?

Oh, I'm so glad they're at your treatment center. It's the first night's sleep I've had in two years.

That's the kind of stuff we do to human beings. And they mean that, you know,

and they'll come to, they'll come to family. By the way, just so you know, I've learned along the way, we don't let them talk to their family either

because they'll call, we send me this, we see. But I did that. I robbed, I robbed people of emotional security. Friends, you know,

I loved ones, I robbed them of emotional security. How do you make that up? I'll tell you how you make that up.

It's OK to sit on and make the amends. Big Book talks about making approach, but you know how I realized I made that up to people. I showed up whenever I said I was going to show up. It's that simple. I sent birthday cards. I did phone calls. But the the closer that they were to me, the more I found it necessary to suit up and to show up and be there when I told him. That's how that's how I allowed them to be restored. That emotional security that I rot, you know, and I can tell you

right up to to the death of my father or the death of my mother. I did not rob them emotional security one time really from the day I got sober, every single tie them. I told him I was going to be somewhere. I was somewhere

I had a sponsor who understood all this, knew I wouldn't. So he was just directive. He'd say every other Sunday I want you to drive up the mountains because I lived in Denver. Once you drive up the mountains, I want you to spend a few hours with your parents.

Oh, that sounds exciting

and say I don't care, just go do it. And he was the kind of guy that,

you know, it's just some guys with they're like when they say stuff, it's like, I don't think I'm going to ask too many questions. I think I'll just go do it in.

And if you're like me, that's that's the kind of sponsorship that I needed. I needed in your face that that almost that, that that look that says and don't ask anything beyond the instruction I've just given you. OK, so we go do that. And then somewhere down the road, I started to wake up to why he was having me do. And then I'd bring it up. And then this always gets me too. Then they just smile,

you know, You know what I'm saying? That that, that thing that they know.

I remember when I started working with this man, he,

he said something I didn't understand the time he said I won't work with you unless you make a commitment to me that you'll stay at the job you just got on, hired on for two years. And I said, what? Again, that's not in the big book, right?

Once again, it's that thing of, you know, he looks, he reminds me, he says, listen, let me get clear with you on something. You have nothing I want,

and if you want, when I have, you're going to have to do do what I do. And so I'm going to ask you this again, but there will be a third time. If you want me to work with you, you want to make a commitment. See, he'd know me enough about my job history,

you know,

So I said, OK, I agree to that. Well, I wound up working for that company for eight years. Once again, I needed that kind of direct, in your face kind of stuff, you know, that kind of sponsorship. I'd be at meetings and he would be at and there might be 20-30 people in the room. And

my first 810 years in in Denver was real old time. A From this standpoint, the Chairperson chaired and if you were sharing and got off into La La land,

your feelings were going to get hurt

and he or she did not care.

They they really practice the welfare of the group will come ahead of any individuals needs and they weren't interested in your treatment Babble and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is on the 3rd step. You better be talking about the third step or they're going to say, you know, I.

So there'd be but there'd be 20-30 people in there and and

I had some things to share, you know, and

you'd talk. Remember one time, I don't know, I probably talked, I thought later only 5 to 10 minutes and come here, you know, see the by the way, you people get you that are newer sponsors lie to you when they say they want to talk to you. They don't want to talk to you at all. They have to say something to you is really what that is. It's in the skies of I'm going to talk to you. And but you know, I still remember this to this day. He said to me, what's the root of your problem?

Well, I've done enough work out of the book. I knew that answer. I'm selfies and self-serve. How many people were in that meeting?

All is probably about 30. How long you don't. I said well I don't know, 5-10 minutes, he said. We'll do the math. Isn't it selfish and self-centered? I don't want you ever doing that again,

you know, And you go home and you sit and think about that. You know what, He's right. You know, 30 people in there and I'm going to talk for 10 minutes and I and I've got three years sober. What, what is that all about?

He taught me about that. He taught me about what to talk about means, what not to talk back. And I remember one time I go in there and I'm talking ad nauseam about problems I was having at that time with my wife because my arraignments wouldn't stay put. She wouldn't do as I wished. And

so the show wasn't going good. And he did the same thing, you know, I want to talk to you. And by then I learned he didn't want to talk at all. He was going to holler at me, you know, So he got me real clear that that at a a meeting is not a place which I go dump all my personal stuff that that's what a sponsor's for. And if I'd right to fear inventory and do a few other things he'd ask me to do, perhaps I wouldn't have to bring that sick topic into the,

but I needed that. Do you understand that? I needed the I needed that kind of guidance and direction And thank God he gave it to me.

Looking back, my first five years feel like a blackout. So I I was very damaged. That's just the way that was he and I went through the steps. I was probably about three years around the program before when I look back, God even got me across from somebody who really worked out of the book and, and the steps. I still remember he was asked me what I thought was a very insulting question. He said to me.

What do you think? You're an alcoholic.

I'm three years

because we get like parrots, you know? See, there's another dynamic that for many years I didn't realize

and that dynamic is is this. I get my sense of who I am externally, which is why

now it's insane because your sense of who you are is coming outside yourself over things you have no control over. But we're raised that way. We don't even know we're raised that way. That's why we're all concerned about

what others think,

see, because if you get your sense of self out here, then what you think becomes my comes a barometer for how I'm going to interact. And I mean, I didn't know that I was, I was asleep dreaming. I'm awake, right? No wonder, no wonder we drink. No wonder we had the kind of inventory. Everything that I think defines who I am, I have no control over

and impacts how I feel about myself. Whoa. I mean, one of the processes that it happened to me and one of the greatest things that happened in my spiritual waking was there came a day where my sense of self was derived from inside me and had nothing to do with you anymore, or the job or her or how much is in my bank account. And that day, I became a Freeman.