Live At Pine Lake in Seattle, WA

Give me a second to swallow my gum. Thank you

silly Jersey girl OK I whenever I give a talk I usually start with my sobriety date is September 6, 1994. My sponsors name is Melissa and my Home group is the way Out group in Tannersville, PA. And I always start with those three things because one, I need to stop drinking in order to have a sobriety date, right? 2A sponsor and a Home group is always very, very, very important in achieving any type of sobriety. But I want to pause a moment because whenever I talk, I'm an alcoholic. I'm

liar, you know, and I want to tell you, I want to give you a good story, you know, I want to get you guys really excited and, and I might embellish some things. I always pray

before I start to talk and ask God to put the put love in my heart and the words in my mouth so that I can speak the truth.

So I'm going to try really hard not to lie and it's going to be really hard.

But you know, I, I, I, I had a wonderful time here. I, I went to the, the spirituality breakfast this morning and I heard some wonderful speakers and I thought, Gee, they said it all. I could just go home. I got to meet some wonderful people and, and fellowship, which I really like doing. Part of the reason why I like to do these conferences and I like to do these things and fly all over because I like to see a, a everywhere. I like to see what other people are doing and how you guys are doing it, you know, so that I can learn from you

and said I could take something home and say, you know, I was, I talked to somebody and they did this. Let's try that. I also like to know that it, despite all the different little quirks, we're all the same as well. I love the fact that I can walk into a meeting anywhere in the world and I say that I'm an alcoholic

and identify myself as an alcoholic. And you all understand what that means, you know? And for the newcomers who don't necessarily understand, because I didn't understand what an alcoholic was for a really long time in Alcoholics Anonymous,

nobody explained it to me. I came in and I thought that I had to identify myself as an alcoholic to kind of join the club. I'm in the club, you know, And I didn't really understand what that meant. I just knew that I had to stay it in order to stay here. I had to say to owner in order to share in the closed meetings, which were fun because that's where everybody said everything that I thought was interesting.

But being an alcoholic means that I have a physical allergy, which means that when I put alcohol on my body, I can't control how much I drink once I start.

It means that I have a mental obsession that says, well, that's normal. Or, you know, it's my parents fault. Or I don't care about what's going to happen after I take this drink because the drink means more to me than any possible consequence I could ever encounter. And I have a spiritual malady. And that spiritual malady tells me that I'm alone, that I'm not good enough, and that nobody's ever going to love me. And I have all this stuff going on inside of me. And that's what constitutes being an alcoholic mind, body and spirit, which is why we recover

mind, body and spirit. We put the alcohol down. We recover physically. You know, we come to Alcoholics Anonymous and get a sponsor, start working the steps. And we start to get a little bit going on in the head a little bit, you know. And as a result of working these 12 steps, we have a spiritual awakening and this recovery blossoms.

Now, I'm something of what you would call a Big Book thumper back where I live because there are people who

take exception to the way that I was taught the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are people who don't necessarily believe in the program of recovery as I was taught it in the 1st 164 pages of the Big Book. I was very happy to come here and hear speakers and people just talking about doing step work and recovering and yadda yadda, yadda. I'm like, oh, I'm home

if I can, I take in my suitcase and bring you back to where I live where people yell at me. So I have a tendency to piss people off when I speak.

In fact, where I live, I'm invited. People will say, you know, oh, I'm celebrating. Let's get Carrie to come in and make my Home group really angry,

you know? Oh, we're having a day of sharing. Let's get Carrie to go in and piss everybody off. Because I have this talent of saying really whatever it is that I think and not really caring whether or not you like me or not. Until afterwards when I go out to the parking lot, somebody comes up to me and says, I don't like what you said. And I was like, well, Gee, you know, most of what I'm going to talk about tonight is, is, is my experience with the 12 steps. And I really don't make this stuff up. I'm not brilliant. There's nothing extra special about me, honestly. I have a great sponsor. I've been lucky to have

sponsors of my life, some wonderful teachers, and I've had people who have introduced me to the program of recovery. And because I got introduced as a young person, I got sober at 18. So I got introduced to the program of recovery as a young person. I've spent my entire adult life living this, which is good and bad, which means that I'm doing everything really for the first time and I'm really trying hard to do it right. Because you know, there are these principles that, you know, we're not supposed to lie. We're not supposed to steal. It's not not supposed to be mean to people. We're supposed to be

tolerant patient and I fail miserably all the time, at least with the patients. Intolerant thing, the stealing thing, I got down. In fact, I guarantee you that I'm not going to take anything from the hotel room.

But you know, so I've embarked on this process and this program of recovery as a, as a young person. So it's, it's an interesting thing because I, I've learned how to do things right the first time and I've been very grateful for that. I have four children. My oldest daughter will be 15 in a month and she's never seen me drink.

I did have her ten months after I got sober, but she's never seen me drink. And my children haven't. They know about recovery. They know about 12 step work. They they know my sponsees. My husband is sober as well. He actually got sober with me. We drank together and we got sober together. We had the same sobriety date and again, those good and bad. The first year is a little rocky, but The thing is, is that this program and what I do and what I talk about it, I don't say anything up here that I don't actually do.

I'm not some. I, I was taught very early on in recovery that I have to do what I say and say what I do and I have to mean it, you know, and so I'm not somebody who

is an Angel in AA and then gets out on the street and, and I'm a meanie, you know, I'm a meanie, you know, because I can't help because I'm an alcoholic, but it's certainly not intentional. But The thing is, is I really believe in practicing these principles. I believe in living this way. So let me tell you a little bit about how I got here. I really don't like to talk about the drunk log. I think it's rather boring. I think your stories are probably a lot more interesting than mine, but for a little bit of identification. So because it's really important in the big book and, and there's a solution. It talks about, it says that the real alcoholic can win the

of another alcoholic in a very short period of time. Because the fact is, is that a non alcoholic or somebody, a doctor, family, friends, they couldn't reach me because they really didn't understand what was going on with me. They saw my behavior. They understood that there was something wrong with me, but they weren't having the same experience that I was having. So despite all of the love and the, the, the energy that the people in my life put into trying to help me, they couldn't.

But as an alcoholic, talking about what my experience was with, with alcohol and then with recovery, I can win the confidence of an alcoholic very quickly because we speak the same language. Now you might have drank more than me, you know, you might have had better jobs or did things that were different, could have a penis, you know. But we have these things in common

that that the allergy, the mental obsession in the spirituality come together that despite whatever our differences might be,

we share this common ground. So my first drink was when I was nine. My first rehab was 9th grade.

I've had several suicide attempts. I have been in four point restraints. I know what a straight check. Actually, that's not true. It's not really a straight jacket, but

it's where they wrestle you to the ground and then they tie your hands and they put you in the bed and shoot you up with Thorzine. I've had that happen. I've had, I've fought. I somebody was talking about it this morning at the spirituality breakfast, talking about like fighting police officers and then straight and the four point restraints. I'm like, yeah,

done that. My parents actually called the cops on me and had I got a police escort to rehab and I fought some police officers and my parents living room. They went to Al Anon and learned some things. So I've had all these experiences. But you know, the, the, the, the rehabs, the mental wards, the four point restraints, the the, the the police officers living on the streets, all these things. They don't make me an alcoholic. These are the things that I experience because of my alcoholism. But what makes me an alcoholic are those three things that I talked about,

you know? And so, you know, there may be some of you who are like, yeah, yeah, I've done the been strapped to the bed thing. And there are some people who are saying, yeah, I didn't do that. But The thing is, and ultimately the thing that that that we have in common are those three things. But what's important for me to talk about is not so much about how bad it was, but to give you an idea of actually what a true miracle I am.

And again, this is not my ego saying, oh, look at me, I'm great.

It's more like, look what Alcoholics Anonymous has done,

Look what God has done. Because I'm the type of person who

when I, when I used to, when I was drinking, I used to want to get sober. And I would leave my house and I would say, I'm going to go to the meeting today and I'm not going to drink.

And I would go out my front door. I would walk down the street and my next thought was, well, if somebody offers me a drink, I'm not going to turn them down.

And then I would get two blocks from the liquor store and I would say, I'm thirsty, I need a soda.

And I would walk into a liquor store and I would buy whatever it is that I was going to buy. And I would be drunk before I got to the meeting. I left my house with every intention of not drinking. I left my house saying I am going to get sober, gosh darn it. And by the way, I have to tell you, I have a foul mouth. I'm a Jersey girl. I'm pathetic. And I curse and I apologize. And what happens if I don't apologize before, you know, while I'm talking, before I start to curse because I feel it coming. Then I spend my whole talk saying, please don't curse, Please don't curse. And then I give a bad talk,

so I apologize for any foul language that flies out of my mouth, and I will work on that character defect, thank you very much. I'm kidding. We don't work on character defects. We just keep offering them to God. Eventually he fixes it when we're ready. So that's my excuse. That's what I'm going with. Thank you. God hasn't fixed it yet.

So anyway, so I was at, that's the type of person, that's the type of alcoholic I was. It's like the most ardent desire to stop drinking was absolutely no of no avail to me that I could want to get sober but couldn't. And it was funny because I don't know why on September 6th, 1994, I didn't drink that day. I woke up, I came to, I was homeless. I had been thrown out of, I had run away from home on Mother's Day when I was 17 because I'm that kind of person. I'm going to run away from home,

you know, pack my hefty bag and get on the back of the motorcycle of this 28 year old guy that I'm dating who has like two ex wives and a couple kids. And I'm 17

and I'm going to get on the back of his motorcycle in front of my parents because that's the type of person I was and drive away without a word. And that's exactly what I did. And of course he threw me out because, you know, I really he was just a wallet and booze to me. You know, that's pretty much what everybody was. There were a wallet and access to to booze. And so I lived with him. He threw me out. I found so my husband actually who would take care of me and

that was what I did. But so

I had with my husband and I, we but we weren't married at the time. We were just to waive Alcoholics wandering the streets, right? Breaking havoc. We had we had an apartment in a town called East Orange, NJ. And I know you guys don't know about East Orange, but it's hell.

It's a ghetto. It's very violent and very scary. And you really don't want to be there at night. And I'm 18 years old and I have this apartment and I was evicted. I don't really know why, but I'm sure pretty sure it had to do with, you know, the mess of alcohol and paraphernalia all over the place and the fact that, you know,

you know, played in loud music at night, stumbled at home, didn't always make it into the apartment. Sometimes it was the front porch or things like that, or the wandering out to go get more

at 3:00 in the morning and then not making it back and things like that. I'm pretty sure that's probably why they had me thrown out of the apartment. I'm pretty sure that was it. But anyway, so I was, I was thrown out of my apartment and I lost the job that I had. I had a job at a clothing store. It was like a Mandy's. And I was fired from there because apparently when you're really drunk, it's very hard to make change.

But the problem was, is my drawer wasn't often short. It was over. Like apparently I just stole people's money.

Well, so I always have like a drawer with like 5 dollars, $10 more. And I, I didn't understand why they had a problem with that. I was making the money, but they had an issue with that. Apparently you have to have exact change when you hand in your receipts in your drawer. So anyway, so I was fired from that job and I was living out of a Hefty bag and I was sleeping on people's couches and I was crashing in people's basements. And my husband and I, we went into New York City to do what we do

with two of the biggest lowlifes in Kearny, NJ,

because that's where I was staying. And the night before I, I got sober, I met a couple people that were driving us into the city at this park. It's called Town Hall Park in Carney. And there was a Monday night meeting right next door. And of course, this happened to be Monday night. I don't know why it never occurred to me that I was, you know, getting getting my ride into the city while I was drunk off my heinie

in Town Hall Park next to all these people from a A that I knew because I had been going to a a meetings and not being able to get sober.

And

this guy, his name was Billy, came up to me and he said, you know, do you want to come downstairs? And I looked him and I had a bottle of Bacardi in my hand and a couple $100 and a ride to the city. I said no.

He said okay well you know if you want to come downstairs you're welcome to do that. And I just laughed in this guys face. I was like Nah. And I got my ride and I went off to do what I did and I woke up, woke up the next morning. Of course, I was broke and I was hungover

and I was exhausted and I was dirty and I was, I mean, I fell in a hole in Harlem. I, there are holes, you know, there I was in an abandoned field like this lot with tires, and there was a hole and I fell in it. I was covered in I'm not really sure what it was, but it ate through my pants

covered in this filth

and I woke up and I was sleeping. Get this? This is the funniest part of this whole thing. I,

my husband and I decided that we were going to sleep in his ex girlfriend's basement because we couldn't make it. We couldn't like, you know, we got off, you know, we got dropped off in Carney and we couldn't make it to the train station to get to where we were staying.

We were, you know, and so the idea is we took shelter in this basement, which was the apartment that he used to have with his ex-girlfriend. Yeah. And so I woke up in my husbands ex girlfriends basement covered in filth and pants eaten through and no money and my parents wouldn't speak to me. And

I remember that guy the night before who said that I can go downstairs if I wanted to. And I remembered thinking that the people in AAA were the only people whoever

ever accepted me and never turned me away, no matter what it was that I did. I'm not left in this man's face. And he smiled,

gave me a hug and said, I'll see you soon. I know. And I remember thinking, this is the only place that anybody will ever tolerate because I'm such an asshole and I really need to go back there. I just do. And I remember getting down on my knees and I remember saying to God, please, just there's a meeting at 1:00 at two towns away. I'll walk there. Please just let me get to this meeting.

Please let me not drink. And I went to the meeting and I stole a big book.

I, I paid that back. By the way, the immense is a beautiful process.

And then I, I, I went to another meeting at 5:00 and then I went to another meeting at 8:00 and then I went and I actually stayed on the couch and my husbands ex girlfriends apartment because she let us in and I detoxed and I haven't had a drink since. And the thing that's miraculous about this is that somebody like me that that doesn't happen.

Somebody like me dies in alcoholic death

like me is a statistic. And I don't know why that I'm not. Except for that God intervened. I had that one true moment of willingness, they say. They say that upon a foundation of willingness, we can build. Well, Bill said it. He can build what he saw on his friend Ebby. And for that one moment, I truly, truly wanted to be sober. And I was willing to pay any price to do that. And the fact is, is that there's a price to be paid in order to get sober and stay sober.

There are requirements.

Nobody likes to hear that. At least where I come from, people don't like to hear that there are requirements or there are rules or there are musts. I remember, I remember sitting in meetings, people say there are no musts in the big book. I'm like, what the hell book are you reading? They, they give me a special version. There are a lot of musts in this book. Must not do this. Must do that,

you know. Must live on a spiritual basis or die in alcoholic death.

But there are no musts. You know, there's some pretty difficult musts in this book, for that matter. But the musts that are in here pay such a deep and wonderful reward. I don't like the word promises. And the reason why I don't like the word promises is because I made a lot of promises and I never kept them. I like the word results. I like cause and effect. I'm not that smart,

but I haven't I, you know, I have a scientific education and I like the idea of cause and effect. You do this, this happens. Bill set up this book because he knows that Alcoholics are result junkies. We're not going to do anything unless we know what we're going to get.

Somebody handed me a glass and I would drink it no matter what. It could have been Drano, but if it smelled like booze, I was drinking it, you know? And then somebody tells me, well, you know, you got to go make that events. Well, do I have to?

Why? You know, I never asked why when I was drinking, but all of a sudden I get sober and I decide that I'm going to pick and choose what I'm going to do to recover. You know, that's a little funny, but I'm like that. That's because I'm an alcoholic and I have this thing that I don't want to pay. I just want results. And that's not how this works. This this the way that this program works or the way that I was taught was that the biggest thing that I need to do is follow direction

that my sponsor has an experience that I don't have my sponsor's sober and I'm.

Not where I'm getting sober. My sponsors a recovered alcoholic, meaning that she is relieved of the obsession to drink and no longer puts alcohol in her system. That's what a recovered alcoholic means. Means recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. That does not mean that the spiritual aspect of my disease is now doing push ups in the parking lot. It does and it is, and it kicks my ass regularly. But the idea here is that I don't have a mind to think about alcohol the way that I used to. My mind does not tell me the lies it used to tell me,

and my body no longer receives alcohol and therefore I'm recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. But how did that happen?

Well, it happened because somebody, somebody gave me this book and you want to hide something from an alcoholic, you put it in a big book. And where I live and where I live and where I got sober, people really didn't do the steps. They talked about them. I can remember sitting in step meetings and people would be like, well, I never wrote a four step, but I heard Hazelton makes a really good pamphlet.

Yeah. And so by the grace of God, my husband got a job out in Staten Island. And in Staten Island there was an enclave of people who were big book Nazis. That's what they call them. They call them the Nazis. And I really hate that connotation. But anyway, that's what they were called. And I accidentally stumbled into this meeting where there was this guy who was from California and he was speaking and he was

there visiting because he was about to leave to go study with the Dalai Lama.

I didn't know this. He looked like Captain Kangaroo and like if David Crosby and Captain Kangaroo had sex and had a love child, this is who this man would. This is what this man looked like.

So I'm 19, almost 20. I have about a year and a half clean. I'm miserable. I'm dying in alcoholic death and and so and in sobriety because I have no recovery. I have no real relationship with God and I'm full of fear. I hadn't gotten access to a solution yet. So basically I was just white knuckling it every moment of every day,

you know, And I had a little girl I had, I had her at 10 1/2 months sober. She was conceived during detox,

thank God, because if she was conceived, priority detox, that would have been really scary. And so I had this little baby and I'm sober and I'm a kid and I have no tools for living. I cannot function. I can remember, I can remember, I was, I was in a meeting in Staten Island when I first moved there and I was sitting in the back of the meeting and I, I needed to get a cup of coffee. Meeting hadn't started yet or anything like that. And, and, and it I was sitting at the back and, and to get up to go to the front to get that

coffee seemed like I was walking 1,000,000 miles. And everyone was gonna look at me and everyone was gonna see me. And what would they think about me? And how it took me 5 minutes to just get up the courage to get up and get this cup of coffee and go sit down at my table. Because you would see into me and see how worthless and alone and fraud that I was. Because I would come in and I would parrot all these slogans and all these things and, and I sounded good when I was sharing, but I really

was empty and hollow inside and alone because I didn't have access to a higher power, because I was still my own higher power.

So I walk into this meeting and there's this guy who's about to study with the Dalai Lama and he walks up to me and he starts talking me. And in fact, he talked about immense. And I took exception to what he had to say. Because I don't think you have to make amends to everybody, 'cause I

am possibly one of those people who could be hurt when it says, you know, we make amends to everyone except when injured them or others. I considered myself an other,

and I want to explain this to this man.

And what he did is he sat down and he pulled me aside and he said, you know, he asked me some questions about my drinking. And I said, haha, yeah, yeah. You know, when I drink, I can't stop. And, you know, no, I can't control and enjoy my drinking. And once I start, you know, yeah. You know, that happens to me too. Yup, Yup, Yup. When I'm controlling it, I'm not enjoying it. When I'm enjoying it, I'm not controlling it. Yup, Yup, Yup. And they start asking me about the way I think about alcohol. And I'm answering all these questions. My head's going up and down and up and down. And he starts talking about the spirituality and Page 52 the bedevilments, you know. Yeah. You're having trouble with personal relationships. Oh, yeah,

Yeah. You prayed to misery and depression. Uh-huh. You full of fear? Damn right. Can you be of real help to other people? No. You know, I can barely tie my shoes, and it took me like, 15 minutes to just get out the door to get here, you know? And another reason why I talked to him is because he looked like Captain Kangaroo,

you know,

anyway, and he starts and I realized today after having, you know, some recovery, that he, what he was doing is he was qualifying me. He was asking me about my first step. He was asking me about all those, the mind, body and spirit, about alcoholism. And then what he did is he called somebody over. He said you need to work with them now. And I started to go through the 12 steps,

so I'm almost two years sober before I actually put pen to paper and actually write a four step. I'm almost two years over before I find out what it means to be an alcoholic,

you know? Can you imagine that? God? Thank God I was able to remain sober for that time, but if I hadn't, I would have died. I was dead for 2 1/2 minutes by my own hand when I was 16 years old.

I was really pissed when I came to in the ICU intubated shit, I was like, I can't even die. Can't live, can't drink. Rehab sucks. I hate you. God, you know, I was really very upset. I kind of expected to, you know, to just kind of go, go out nice and cool and easy to wake up, you know, all kinds of tubes and charcoal and and then another and then another rehab. That was not my idea of a good time, you know, But the idea is that, you know, that's, that's me. That's what happens to me when I'm untreated.

So then somebody like me spent two years almost an Alcoholic Anonymous, completely untreated with nothing, nothing between her and a drink

except for the grace of God.

That's a scary how many people are dying today because of the state of Alcohol Anonymous? And I'm not talking about here, 'cause you guys seem to be doing a really good job. But around the around the country, around the world, that's not necessarily what's going on. I can remember being about three years sober and I was in a step meeting and we were talking about the four steps. So I cracked out my big book. And of course, the step meeting means a 12:00 and 12:00 meeting.

I cracked out my big book and said, oh, you know, there's some instructions of the force if you want to take a look at it. And I got thrown out of the meeting.

Yeah. So when when I learned to have a really thick skin

because I piss a lot of people off. And two, what I learned is the truth is the truth and you can't argue with the truth. And my experience has been that after I found out that I was absolutely screwed. I mean, the thing that the thing, the thing about the first step and what the first step really tells me. If I answer yes to all those questions, then I am screwed. Then I cannot recover on my own power and there is no human power that can come between me and that bottle.

That the only solution for me is a spiritual experience,

a spiritual experience with God that I don't know or understand or have any experience with. Because I spent my entire life in a bottle and full of fear. And now I'm told that I have to get this relationship with this higher power that I didn't particularly like. And I felt rejected because, you know, I tried to die, man, I wouldn't even let me die. So I was really pissed off at God. And I grew up in this household where my parents were wonderful people. My parents are not Alcoholics, but unfortunately, four out of five of my brothers and sisters are,

and I'm the youngest by about 16 years. So I grew up in an alcoholic household, even though my parents did the best that they could.

I grew up around drugs and violence. And, you know, I'm the type of kid who was tossed downstairs. Bad things have happened to me. That doesn't make me an alcoholic. I thought it did. I thought I drank because I had pain, because of my inner child, and I wasn't loved enough, you know? And my big book tells me that although I might be mentally defective,

that that was not, that my alcoholism is not causal, that these things didn't help.

They certainly exasperate, you know, they made the situation worse, but they didn't 'cause my alcoholism.

But I had, I had all this stuff that was going that went on in this on these experiences and, and as a woman, and I know this is gonna make some men uncomfortable, but I don't care because there's not a whole lot of women speakers. So too bad. Sit through it.

You know, as a woman, as an alcoholic, we had, I had to do a lot of things I didn't particularly like doing a lot of things that made me feel really worthless and empty inside. I mean, shit, I ran away from home with a 28 year old guy with two ex wives and a bunch of kids. I didn't feel particularly happy or proud of that moment of my life. You know when you're drunk and you're in A and you're a woman and you're passed out, Sometimes people do things to you that you didn't particularly want them to do,

or you didn't even know that they were doing it until you woke up in the middle and said, hey, who the hell are you and why are you on me? Why am I naked?

These things happen and they really, truly take a chunk out of your soul and your spirit, you know? So you put that together with an alcoholic household, physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape.

And I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm completely empty inside and I'm full of anger. And I'm told that I'm supposed to get a relationship with a higher power who I thought caused all this stuff. Because, you know, if he really loved me, he would give me better parents. If he really loved me, he wouldn't have made me an alcoholic. If you really love me, then you know everything. My life would be great, right?

I mean, I used to sit when I was a little Kitty. I used to dream that I was used to pray that my real parents would come and save me from my household.

Yeah, yeah. I am really, really related to my family. But I used to really dream the day that I found out that I wasn't and that I would be rescued from what I was experiencing in my life. And again, this isn't to make people uncomfortable, but to explain why when it came to AA and I was told that I had to get a relationship with a higher power and I had to get it, get it now. And my life depended on it. It was. It was like asking me to. It was like asking me to jump the Grand Canyon on a skateboard.

It was completely impossible and fathomable and absolutely frightening.

But Bill talks about it. He says that. He says that we have to make that. We have to

walk over the bridge of reason to the to the shores of faith. He says that we have to try.

You know, the big book talks about experience. He doesn't talk. They don't talk about what we think about the steps. They don't talk about what we think about God.

Bill talks about our experience. He says that our big book is a combined knowledge and experience.

Because the fact is, is that

whether I like what my solution is today, I like the solution. But when I was introduced to the idea that I had to get a relationship with a higher power, I didn't like that. That wasn't particularly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be told that, you know, some kind of behavior modification, you know, get a rubber band, snap it a bunch of times. They won't drink,

you know, or, you know, maybe I just talk a real lot about all the terrible things that everybody did to me, and I can blame them for my problems. I can get it out of Maine, and then I can, you know, be normal like everybody else.

But what I was told was that I had to get this relationship with a higher power that I didn't like, that I didn't trust, that I blame for all my problems. And I was told that I would die if I didn't. And So what Bill asked us to do is to do something called the God experiment.

Now he doesn't say it. And there actually he does later. By the way, I stole this. I'm going to I always take credit for this because I'm such an egotistical alcoholic. But the fact is as I read it in language of the heart. But anyway, I'm going to

Bill talks about the God experiment and then we agnostics, he talks about it and he says that we that he gives us all these arguments for faith, right? He talks about electricity, he talks about electrons, he talks about Columbus, he talks about Galileo. He talks about the white Wright brothers and what he's talking about. And what he's saying is he asks us to evaluate

the material world and take a look at what faith and courage has done

for humankind. And he asked us to lay aside our prejudice, no matter how difficult that might be, in order to have an experience with a higher power that we may not understand. Because at the second step, we don't understand a higher power. We have no experience with it because we've been playing God our entire lives and calling it something else. At least I had been,

you know. So Bill asked us to lay aside all of those things, to have an experience with a higher power.

And then he politely explains to us that if we don't do that, that that will probably drink again. He talks about it. He says that alcohol is a great persuader, that it beats us into a state of reasonableness, You know, so that's why we spend so much time in the big book talking about the first step, to make sure we're nice and beaten. So that when we approach the concept or the idea that we have to get a relationship with a higher power, that we're much more open to it because we're reminded exactly what it means to be an alcoholic, which means a death sentence,

because that's what it is. It's a death sentence.

So then I took this God experiment. I didn't know that I did. What I knew is that the people who were showing me how to do this recovery thing knew something I didn't know and were happy and I wasn't. It was that simple. So I was willing to believe that they believed that there was something greater than themselves. And I was willing to believe that if I did what they did, I would get what they got. And what they had was they seemed to not be so afraid of everything and everyone, and they had some freedom in their lives. And I wanted that,

you know, so I,

I took

my third step and what my third step was a pact that I made with God. You ever read the third step prayer? That's a freaking contract man

read it. In fact, you know what, despite the fact that I do have it memorized because I say it every morning just for the effect, I'm going to read it out of my big book says God Ioffer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou will relieve me of the bondage itself, so they may better do. They will take away my difficulties at victory over them who bear witness. Those I would help with. I love thy power and they way a life made you thy will always. So I said God take me because I right now everything sucks

and I am absolutely convinced that the hopelessness and futility of my life as I've been living it

build with me and do with me as thou will. And that's and you know, and when we read the 7th step prayer, it says my creator right, because what bills telling us is that God isn't finished with us, that we're unfinished work, we're unfired clay and that we get to get back into the game and allow God to finish or to work with us again. Because the fact is, is that when I'm running on self will and when I'm God, and when I'm my own God,

trust me, I can be. I'm not participating in God's creation. I'm working against it. Because I have my own idea of what everything's supposed to look like. I have my own idea who you're supposed to be, who I'm supposed to be, and what we're supposed to do. And when I'm blocked by that, that idea, I can't truly be of service to anyone else because I'm so busy trying to make you fit yourself to be a maximum service to me.

So I'm asking God to build with me

to continue. I'm saying God, all right, I'm ready for you to work with me, relieve me of the Bonjour to self. And I'm asking you to relieve me the bondage itself so that I can better do your will. So I'm not asking God to take away all the problems and all the crap that annoys me and the fact that I'm a complete emotional basket case so that I can feel better because I've been looking to feel better my entire life. That's what that's how I made it here. You know, I've been looking to feel better.

You know what? What I'm asking God to do

is to help me to be better so that I can serve Him. That's a deal, isn't that? Umm, that's a cause and effect. That's me saying God do this for me and I'll do this for you. I struck a bargain, didn't I?

We don't like to look at it that way, but it's what we're doing says take away my difficulties, that victory over them. We bear witness to those that would help thy power, thy love and they way of life may do, they will always. So take away my difficulties so I can be an example of your grace and your love on this earth so that I can help others. Again, I'm not asking God to take away all the stuff, the craziness, the the fear, the committee that lives in my head in order for me to feel better. I'm asking God to do that so I can serve him