Chapter 5 at the Men Among Men Groups's conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

OK, so I'm still carrying. I'm still an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is still September 6, 1994,

My sponsor's name is still Peggy and my Home group is still the Way out group or a Way out group. Sorry, not the way out Group, A way out group in Tannersville. And

I think that we covered in a lot of ways what it means to be an alcoholic this morning. I mean, if we talked about the physical allergy, we talked about the mental obsession, we talked about the spirituality, and then we also talked about what one has to do in order to to treat those things. And the idea that

that you know, our book says that that that when we straighten out spiritually, we straighten out mentally and physically and it goes on in working with others. It talks about it and it says that you know, the man or the woman because it's sexist book, you know, says the man. But we all know that there are female Alcoholics.

I being one,

it says that the man or woman, the person or individual who you know, who said who cries for, you know, his family cries for work, he cries for all these things.

So all these external things that, that we tell them that, you know, that you can't focus on the external things that we that we have to focus on the internal condition. And by treating the internal condition, these external things either get better or you're able to tolerate them better.

What we say is that in absolute reliance and dependence upon a higher, higher power is necessary for one to recover from alcoholism. You know, And the idea here is this is that

if I have an alcoholic mind, right, I this alcoholic mind that can't at certain times recall with sufficient force, and I'm in the mean sufficient force. It means that I'm able to remember the pain and misery of even a week or a month ago, but a month ago, but it's not going to matter to me. So I love it when I hear people talk about think the drink through. That's another American saying, I don't know if you guys have it out here, but we have it. We have a think to drink through right now. If I was capable of thinking the drink through, then I would probably be what someone would classify a hard drinker.

I can go home, although I wouldn't get to see, you know, the beautiful Iceland in the middle of March with lots of snow and really cold.

I, you know, I always, I always tell my sponsors I'm like, they're like, oh, you get to go to all these exotic places. Yeah, Iceland in March, it's cold. You know, You know, when Bermuda in February calls me and says they want me to do a conference there, I'm going to be really jazzed. Not that I don't like being here, not that it's not beautiful, because it's beautiful and I like being here, but I like the warmth.

You know, I left someplace cold. I don't want to go from place cold to someplace colder. I'd really like to go from someplace cold, someplace warmer. But the point is, is that if I was capable of thinking the drink through, then my presence here would be somewhat irrelevant. That as an alcoholic, I'm incapable of recalling or recalling with sufficient force. The pain and suffering that I described earlier about what it looks like when I pick up a drink,

I'm incapable of recalling with sufficient force

the physical craving that I have when I put alcohol in my body. I'm incapable of recalling the fallout or the repercussions that happen when I put alcohol in my body. So I have this mental obsession. I have an alcoholic mind. I have an alcoholic mind that focuses on one thing and that's relief from pain. And the only way that I know to relieve that pain, well, now I know God. But then was alcohol,

and alcohol was my God. It did for me what I couldn't do for myself,

so I had this mental obsession. Now the bill goes through and talks about

the type of thinking that one has preceding a drink. Yeah, actually let me swallow my gum for a second cuz I'm being rude. There we go.

I swallow my gum. OK, So Bill talks about the type of thinking that precedes a relapse. You know, he talks about he talks about Jim. And he says Jim had a resentment Jim showed up to work on on Tuesday when, you know, and he had some words with the boss and he went off, you know, looking for a car or a buyer for a car. And suddenly

he had this thought, you know, I could put alcohol in milk and it would be all just fine. And the idea that this, these these thoughts, these obsessive thoughts just suddenly happen. Well, they're not all that sudden to the people around us. They're sudden to us because we're in something called delusion. Everyone around us says, you're going to drink. And we go, Nah, I'm fine.

Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. I'm just fine. And of course we drink because I'm not awake to or paying attention to my spiritual condition. Because I'm rationalizing and justifying things and I'm avoiding dealing with the true nature of my problem, which is not alcohol. It's not my crazy head in the way it thinks about alcohol,

but it's that spiritual malady that's that self obsession

that I'm cursed with that everything and anything that that I experience or

deal with automatically in some way relates back to myself. So basically, you're not allowed to have an experience with anything that doesn't have something to do with me on some level. Because if you're doing something, I'm going to make it about me because I'm that damn important. And if you don't know that, I'm going to make sure you do. I'm going to tell you how important I am

and how whatever it is that you're doing has to do with me because I have this self obsession. Bill calls it. He says, he says that was self-centered. He says actually we're self-centered. I think three times and how it works. He says selfishness and self-centredness is the root of our troubles. We can't wish them away, that we have to have God's help. So the idea here is that I have this selfish, self-centered

perspective on life, and that I can't take this or change this perspective

without appealing to a power greater than myself, in the same way that I can't change my perspective regarding alcohol. I can know that the first drink will get me drunk, but I'll continue to drink because I'm seeking relief from this spiritual condition, which is the engine of my discontent.

And I'm driven by 100 forms of fear, self delusion and self pity. And I step on the toes of my fellows and they retaliate seemingly without provocation. But I find it sometime in the past, I made a decision based on self that places me in a position to be hurt. Right. So that that's a firm description of what it looks like to have a spiritual malady on page 52 of my big book, which is my favorite, favorite paragraph. Because whether you have two days or 20 years or 30 years,

if your alcoholism is eaten your lunch, you're going to be experiencing something called the bedevilments.

And what they are is we're having trouble with our personal relationships.

We're full of fear. We can't seem to make a living. We can't seem to be of real help to other people. We're pray to misery and depression. And there's one last one. Forgot it. Does that tell you about where I'm at? I'm kidding. Came to be real. We can't. Oh, we have feelings of uselessness. So

that state, that spiritual state is what what it means to be an untreated alcoholic. Now I can have that drinking,

I can have that with two days sober. I can have that with 25 years sober. I can have that with 10 years sober. What that state is, is what what that self obsession looks like and how it translates into our lives. And at any given point in my life or in any given point in my sobriety, if something's up and I'm not feeling right, I can go back to these bedevilments and say, where am I with these? Am I having trouble personal relationships? How's my relationship with my husband, my family, my kids, my sponsees, my friends, my Home group, my sponsor?

Am I thinking at people? Are they thinking at me? How am I with my employer? Am IA good employee? Or am I secretly thinking I'm the boss? You know, how am I?

For a long time in Alcohol Anonymous

I thought I was helping people because I would do something nice for you. I thought, you know, give you a ride to a meeting. I give you 5 bucks for a cup of coffee, I give you a meal. I thought I was insane. You know, I'm so unselfish. I'm of service. I pick up the phone for night watch and I make coffee for my Home group. Don't you know what a self sacrificing, so unselfish person I am? But I was doing all those things with a selfish motive.

I was doing all those things to look good, to make you like me, and to be important. So inevitably that when I participated in this stuff, even though I felt or thought that I was being helpful, in reality I was often quite destructive and controlling. Because what happened was my selfishness and self saturnist expressed itself under the cloak of unselfishness,

but I was really just a controlling, maniacal monster

to the people that I loved and cared about. Or I thought I did because I didn't know what the definition of love really was. I thought love was how I felt about a person. I didn't realize that love was putting aside one's own selfish needs for another person's spiritual growth. That's the definition that I work with right now. I've been working with it for

1415 years, something like that, and it's been working out for me. But the idea here is that when it talks about being not being able to be of real help to other people or feeling help, feeling useless, It's not that we're not doing kind or loving things. So I'm not doing kind and loving things in a kind and loving way. I'm making these expressions of service an expression of my ego and I'm getting sicker. So whether I'm two days sober and I'm thinking, well, if I

make coffee at this meeting, I won't drink today or if I'm 20 or 16 years sober and I'm thinking if I could just sober up this sponsee because I'm so important and I have such a great message, why don't they get this?

What I'm doing is I'm making all of what all of the the privileges that God gave me in Alcoholics Anonymous because it's a privilege to be of service. It's a privilege to stand up here. It's a privilege to make coffee in my Home group. It's a privilege to hear somebody's fist step. It's a privilege to sponsor. These are all things that I get to do by benefit of living on a spiritual basis,

and I get to do them more effectively because I apply these spiritual principles to my life.

So what does that have to do with alcoholism? Well, has a lot to do with alcoholism because that's why why when you're 16 or 12, you're sober. A drink looks good because we have this stuff going on. We know we can't pick up a drink, can't drink, can't not drink. And I got no God because I'm too busy being it. And I think that I believe in God, but what I do

and what I say are two different things. My sponsor has a mantra.

Do what you say and say what you do.

And what that means is if I say I believe in God, but I act as if and I live in fear, then I don't really believe in God. I think about God.

I think about God. I have some concepts of God, but I don't have experience with God because I'm not bringing God into the daily minutia of my life. I'm having an intellectual experience with a possible concept from some books that I probably read and some some some pearls that I robbed off some speakers and and I get to come up here and sound important, but I'm not experiencing God. I'm thinking about God.

So when we talk about the second step, what we're talking about

is having an experience with God. It's an experiment

now. Bill was a genius and I didn't realize this until

quite a few years in my sobriety. I

I'm educated in a science in which applies something called the scientific method. You guys know what that is? You know, hypothesis, theory, testing, yadda, yadda, yadda, right?

Well, Bill, the way that he said about we agnostics is he set it up as a God experiment.

He has a hypothesis. And what he says was that people who are living on a spiritual basis seem to be able to manifest things in their lives that we as Alcoholics can, right. He says that that we saw and I love this. It's one of my favorite lines. Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they've come to believe in a power greater themselves, take a certain attitude towards that power, and that's reliance, independence,

do certain simple things. Those are the 12 steps, or those were the six tennis of the Oxford Group when he wrote this. But we're not going to nitpick

to certain simple things. There's been a revolutionary change in the way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, and the face of the total failure of the human resources, they found a new power piece and happiness in a sense of direction flowed into them. This happened as soon as they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements. Again, 12 steps. Once confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence, they show the underlying reasons why they're making a heavy going to life. And that's the selfishness, self centeredness, and fear that drives us.

Leaving aside the drink questions. And we're not even talking about alcohol anymore. We talked about alcohol this morning. We talked about the ABS and C's. We talked about rarely have you seen a person fail or thoroughly followed our path. We talked about what it means or what happens when one engages in the program of recovery. So now we're not talking about alcohol anymore. We're talking about us. We're talking about me. We're talking about who I am and what I do in the absence of the delusion that alcohol has anything to do with why I'm a crazy motherfucker.

Doesn't

I'm a crazy motherfucker and I drink

these things are somewhat,

you know, the way I love. If you read the steps off the off the off the shade we call it, it says powerless over alcohol hyphen.

My life is unmanageable. It doesn't say because and, but if it's just hyphen, you know what a hyphen is. Separates 2 independent clauses.

My sponsor was a college professor, taught English. I wouldn't have figured that out on my own.

So that means powerless over alcohol. I put alcohol in my system. I react with craving. I have a crazy head that tells me that's a good idea, despite the fact that repeated experiences have showed me that it's a really bad idea. My life is unmanageable. I have a spirituality that kicks my ass, drunk or sober. It will eat my lunch and it will drive me to insanity and it'll make suicide look like a good idea. 10 years over because I can't drink, can't live, got no God and got nowhere to go

right. So these are two independent clauses. So when we're talking about and what we're looking at this thing right here, what we're talking about with the idea that people who are living on a spiritual basis are manifesting something in their lives that me as an active untreated alcoholic can. Is the concept that

somewhere along the line, a belief or reliance of dependence on a higher power

is an integral part of Maine becoming a functional human being in society, that

I'm incapable of doing that without this relationship? And So what Bill says is let's look at the evidence. We have this idea that people who are living by faith or people who have a relationship with a higher power seem to be able to do things that we can't do. We're drinking crazy suicidal maniacs, right? Homicidal, suicidal, crazy drinking, gutter puking, disgusting messes. Can we agree on that? Active Alcoholics were gross.

OK, after lunch. You guys are so tired. Just let it. Come on. Let's get all excited. Not kidding. OK. Can't even make you laugh. All right, I see how it is.

All right, So we're gross. People have a spiritual experience and they stop being gross, right?

So Bill has us look and say, OK, well, we, I come into Alcohol Anonymous. I'm a gross, disgusting alcoholic. I don't even own a pair of underwear. I come into a a look around and I see these people and they're not gross anymore and they're doing things that I can't do, like, you know, pay bills, you know, function, have a conversation with somebody and like look at them instead of looking at my feet going

what you were talking to me, you know, and being able to interact in just the most purely simple ways, right? They're able to do that. I can't. So I look around, examine the evidence of my senses, and I come up with this idea, the hypothesis, right, saying, is it possible that the God idea works and my ideas don't?

Is this possible? Well, the only way that I'm going to find that out is by trying the God idea, right? I mean, the only way that we know anything for sure is by trying it. Let me ask you a question. Say you're at a party

back in the drinking days. Somebody comes up and they say I got this rock gut stuff. It is the most awesome stuff you've ever had in your life, and it's somewhere between mescaline and vodka. You want some? Now this person presented some evidence that they drank this rock gut stuff to somewhere between muscle and vodka, and they're having a good time with it. They seem to be happy. I examined the evidence. In my senses. I say this sounds like a good idea,

So what do I do? Well, I drink it and I have my experience and I drink my balls off and whatever.

I'm having a good time.

I've just did an experiment right there with alcohol. I did it all the time. I did it with men. I did it with selfishness. I've done it. I'm going to try and manipulate you to being some way that I think you should be so that I can be happy, because I can't be happy if you're not doing what I want. You got me on this one. So I've performed this experience or this experiment 1000 billion kajillion times

in my sickness. And what Bill's asking us is to possibly consider doing it, taking that same

set of tools and applying it in a constructive way. Now, that's a little crazy to ask an alcoholic to do. That's like asking us to, you know, take that leap of faith. Well, leap of faith, he says hole in the donut. And he's got a couple of explanations for this this thing. But I've taken that leap of faith lots of times. You know, somebody walks up with a handful of pills and what are they don't know? Let's find out

there is even any experiment. No, the hypothesis. Except for their pills. They must be good.

So I'm going to take these skills. I'm going to apply it to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And really what the crux of the second step is, is taking that leap of faith and walking through whatever doubt I have to attempt to have an experience with power greater than myself. The problem is, is that I suffer from a delusion that I'm God. I say I believe in God, but I behave as if I am God.

You know, I say, oh God, take this from me,

but then I lie and manipulate in order to make you do what I want so that I can get what I want because I really don't trust that God's going to give me what I want. I just say I do so that you'll think I'm really spiritual. I'm a liar and a hypocrite, right? Because if I don't actually put my money where my mouth is, then I'm just kind of giving the whole God thing a lip service, right? So what Bill's saying is don't give Idlib service. Do it, try it. So what we want to do, or the concept of the

step, is to examine

what our experience was with alcohol and also what our experience was with ourselves. But the bedevilments

and then ask ourselves

which is easier, continuing to stay in the state that we are right And what what is Bill say? He says that alcohol will beat us into a state of reasonableness

or trying on this concept that the God idea works and living on a spiritual basis is certainly better than what I've been doing prior.

And So what I do in the second step is recognize that this is a

turning point from me, and I'm either going to embark on the spiritual path or I'm going to continue to allow alcohol or alcoholism to beat me into a state of reasonableness. And yeah, it will until I'm damn ready or I die, because that's the that's the nature of alcoholism. And in America, we have somewhere between a six and 26% recovery rate in Alcoholics Anonymous, which is abysmal.

We invented the damn thing and we suck at it.

God's honest truth.

Our recovery rate is horrible. The recovery rate of the original members of Alcoholics Anonymous and people who wrote this book was somewhere between 50 and 75%, right? If you go into the forwards, they talk about it and say that you know that somewhere around 75% of the people who come to Alcoholics Anonymous and really give it a try, after one or two relapses, we'll get sober and stay sober, right?

That was in 1955.

I have people and friends who crunch the statistics on chips. And you've had Chris Raymer out here. You've heard this talk before. I mean, I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard. But the fact is, is that we really do have an abysmal recovery rate. And the question is why? Why is it that Alcoholics Anonymous is not flourishing in the very society that helped to create it? And why am I out here telling you guys stuff that you already know?

And the people in my hometown

avoid my Home group like the plague because we all talk like this.

Why is that? Well, I'll tell you why. Because people are afraid of pissing people off. And Alcoholics Anonymous, they're afraid of talking about God. They're afraid of scaring away the newcomer. What they don't realize is that alcohol is going to scare them right back. And they're afraid of actually embarking in this path. Because if they do that, they're going to have to give up their drama. And drama can be very comforting. See, if I got drama going on, if I have issues going on, I could have things that I can blame for why I am the way I am.

If I do this work and I get rid of some of that drama and God relieves some of that drama,

those really those things in my life begin to be resolved because I stopped screwing them up.

I got nothing to blame for who I am or what I do, but myself, isn't that correct? If it's not my husbands fault, if it's not my mother's fault, it's not my father's fault. If it's not my shrinks fault. If it's not my friends fault. If it's not

the world's fault because they owe me a living

and I'm not flourishing my life, it's because I'm not living it right, because I'm not taking advantages, advantage of the gifts that God's given me. So it's a lot easier to sit in my blame and it's a lot easier to sit in my delusion that somehow what you do has an impact on me spiritually because it doesn't. The only reason why anybody bothers me is because I agree with them. Now, I use this with my sponsees all the time and they love this. It's not going to work so much here because you guys are all blonde

and blue eyed. But I go up and I say, you know, I go up to my brunette adorable sponsee and I say I have to put a plunk in for us Burnett's, especially in the land of Barbies. That's what I call Iceland, by the way, the land of the Barbies, because you're all beautiful and blonde, most of you. But the idea is that I go up to my beautiful brunette sponsee and I say your hair is blonde. And she looks at me and goes,

no, it's not what's wrong with your eyes? Obviously you're colorblind because you're misperceiving my hair because it's obviously Raven black.

I don't agree with that perception. Obviously Carrie needs some glasses, right? I go up to her, say you're fat, stupid and worthless piece of shit, and they go, Oh my God, she doesn't love me. Why? Because she agreed with it,

my perception of whether she had blonde hair or she was a fat, worthless piece of shit are both wrong. Because here's the amazing thing is that in God's world, world, God's children and nobody's a fat, worthless piece of shit. And if I happen to think somebody is a fat, worthless, worthless piece of shit, it's because there's something wrong with my thinking, not with their being. So when somebody calls up and says you're fat and you're ugly, you're not good enough, you're this, you're that, you're that, blah, blah, blah, you're a failure, blah, blah, blah. And I've heard these things. Or how about

you're a big book Nazi and ruining Alcoholics Anonymous? I hear that all the time, and I hate being called a big book Nazi 'cause I want to point out that I have not committed genocide, nor nor do I plan to in any of the time that I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous. OK, just saying. But when people come up to me and they say things like that to me, if I get upset, it's because I, on some deep level, agree with them. There's some part of me that believes that I'm a fat, worthless piece of shit.

Now

ultimately, if I change my perception and myself by doing a four step, looking at my resentments and fears, doing a fifth step, sharing this information with God and another person, going into six and seven, then making amends for the things that I did because of my fears,

those perceptions will be removed.

So the idea here, I had a conversation with somebody this morning and

we're just joking around and he thought he was going to insult me by answering a question that I gave him. And it was just a funny little thing. And ultimately the idea here is that somebody can't insult me unless I agree with them. If I don't care about their perception, if I don't need their approval, it doesn't matter to me whether you like me or don't. So ultimately, if you think I'm brilliant or if you think I'm a pain in the butt, it's irrelevant to my being if my experience with God is concrete.

So what happens is, or what's been happening in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we're so involved in our drama to distract ourselves from this state of being in which we assign every single person in our life the role of higher power, including ourselves.

Because ultimately, if I agree with your perception that I'm a worthless piece of shit, then I'm making your perception more important than God's because I don't know about you, but somewhere in this book, I think it was in the ninth step, it says something about how we're children of God that we we stand on our feet and we crawl before nor no one were not to be servile or scraping. Pretty sure. Yep, Yep, it's in here.

So the idea here is that my book tells me that I'm a child of God. My book tells me

that I am not a worthless piece of shit, that I'm to stand on my feet, that I'm not to be servile or scraping, that I'm to be centered in who and what I am, right?

So if I believe that, and I lived as if that was true, then I wouldn't have to focus on all this other drama and all this other stuff. And what people think about me and what they think at me and what I think they think at me and what I think they're thinking at me. And telling other people about what they're thinking at me is irrelevant to who I am as a person.

So ultimately, what I believe is going on in Alcohol Anonymous is that one in America. I'm going to qualify that because you guys are doing a great job out here,

is that rehabs have taught us to think about our alcoholism as being causal

and that somehow my mommy not loving me enough and not breastfeeding me or whatever the hell it was somehow caused me to have an attachment disorder and now I feel worthless and have low self esteem so I drink to feel better.

Two that the old timers knock off. Anonymous are so pissed off at us for coming in here and saying shit like that that they sit in the back of the room because they don't even want to tolerate the rehab mumbo jumbo inner child crap that we drag in there. So they're tired of fight with us. So they just sit in the back and they hang out amongst each other, smoke their cigarettes, drink their coffee, have their own little private meeting and let us ransack Aquax Anonymous.

And the people who are around long enough and wake up a little bit and have an experience with the steps and start to get better

decide that their drama is more important than carrying this message. Somehow they get caught up in the external stuff, the house, the car, the prestige, the job, that this that those things are irrelevant to my sobriety. If I'm living on a spiritual basis and I'm living in a cardboard box, you can't take this spiritual experience away from me. It is the only thing that is tangible that I have because my children are not mine. My husband is not mine. I can come home and he could be moved out tomorrow.

You know, I leave them a lot and go on conferences. I'm surprised when I come home and he is still there, you know, just saying, you know, I left him with four kids. I'm really surprised he's still there.

My all of these things are not mine. They're things I get to do, people I get to interact with, relationships I get to have. But ultimately, they're ephemeral.

They can go at any point. The only thing that I have that is of any concrete in meaning is the spiritual experience that I've had via the 12 steps of alcohol because it's the only thing that can sustain regardless of my external condition.

So getting back to the second step, there's a, there's a method to my menace. I swear, when we're looking at 2:00 and 3:00, right, we come up with this concept of the God idea does works and our ideas don't, right? We look at our life and realize that we're ruled by everything and everyone

and everyone's perceptions of us. Trump's however we might think or think we might think about ourselves,

right? So ultimately, I have a billion gods and no higher power making sense to you? Lots of deities. No higher power because I don't have any power because lack of power is my dilemma. How I'm going to find that power and gain a relationship with that power is what this book is all about. The book is about getting to that power. The thing that I do to get to that power is work the 12 steps of Alcohol Anonymous and apply these principles to my life.

So that brings me to step three. I recognize that I that lack of power is my dilemma. I realize that I can't think my way into being well. I realize that my sick mind can't fix my sick mind. In fact, Bill refers to, he says, trying to cure the headache with a hammer.

And that's exactly what my thinking me thinking about me, thinking about me, about how I'm going to think about me. That's exactly what that does, trying to cure the headache with the hammer. Ultimately, I have to go to something that is not me. And that's why Bill says has to be a power greater than ourselves and it has to be a power by which I can live.

And the point you made this morning about the, the, the, the doorknob is a perfect example of that's not a power by which I can live. Because what if my doorknobs bigger my God's better than yours? What if my God, my God is a sledgehammer? My just my God just sledgehammered your God, You're screwed. I got the better God.

So the idea is if I make a power greater than myself out of a human power, a human thing, a rock, a tree. I mean, those things are beautiful, but I can cut down your tree. What are you going to do when your God trees cut down? We had to find a power by which we can live. Now it could be every tree in the world. And then I can't, you know, like I can't go over and cut down every tree in the world. So if you want to make nature a higher power, go with it, man. But if you want to make one tree your higher power, and I come over there and I chainsaw your higher power,

you got a problem.

So we have to find a power by which we can live and has to be a power greater than ourselves. Step 3 is a decision to gain a relationship with that higher power. We make a contract with what we say to God in our third step, prayer, as we say to God, one, I'm willing that you, I want you to build with me and do with me as thou will. So what I'm saying is God put me back in the game. I haven't been a part of your creation. I've been creating my own world. I've been living as my own higher power in my own world, in my own matrix, and I'm designing

this entire thing and of course I'm screwing it up because I suck. I'm kidding. But I've been screwed up this this game because I'm playing God and I'm not a very good God because I'm not God. So I'm asking you to put me back into the creation and I'm asking you to allow me to be a part of your world again.

And then we go on to say, and I love this. It's such a beautiful thing. And I'm going to, I want you to really think about what the third step prayer says and says we're leaving in the bondage cells that I better do. They will say this every morning, but I still would like to look at it because sometimes I have a habit of doing that. I do three and seven together. So it's part of my morning meditation, but it says relieve me of the bondage itself and I better do thy will. So what I'm saying is all this stuff that I just talked about, the thinking about thinking about thinking and trying to fix, trying to fix myself with my own head

craziness and the hamster and the committee and the screaming monkeys that go on in one's head when one's an untreated alcoholic,

I'm asking God to relieve me of that so I can better do His will. I'm not asking Him to relieve me of it so I can be comfy and hang out on the couch and, you know, surf the net and paint my toenails. That's not what I'm asking God to do. I'm asking God to relieve me of this so I can do His will. And what's His will? Well, His will is to carry the freaking message and sober up drunks.

That's been my experience. I don't know. This book says working with others is an entire chapter. I think. I think it was really important that we work with others. You know, we have a whole step dedicated to carrying this message. Why? Because it's important. So the idea is I'm asking God to relieve me a bond yourself so I can better do His will right. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them and bear witnesses. I would help thy power, thy love and thy way of life may do thy will always. What are my difficulties? My difficulties are the things that we talked about,

the bedevilments, right? My inability to play and work well with others, right? Those are my difficulties. So the bondage itself is the thing that causes it, and the difficulties are the expression of that bondage itself. And I'm asking God to remove my difficulties, but I'm not. Again, I'm not asking him to do it for my comfort. I'm asking him to do it so I can be an example of what God's grace looks like. Because ultimately, what our job is to do an Alkaloids Anonymous is to be an actual living example of God's

race on earth. Because we have recovered from a deadly disease that has a six to 26% recovery rate. This book says fatal, fatal, hopeless, doomed over and over again. Why? Because we're going to fucking die if we continue to drink

and live untreated. We die in alcoholic death, whether it's whether it's drinking ourselves to death, committing suicide, or doing dumbass stuff when we're drinking. And, and I'm pretty sure that, you know, being in Iceland and falling in volcanoes and stuff while drunk, I'm sure that's happened out here, right?

You know,

I'm just saying I'm thinking, you know, so the idea is that I'm going to die an alcoholic death, right?

So I, I've recovered, I have a solution to this deadly disease, right?

I can be an example of what God's grace looks like. And again, I'm not doing it so I can feel good or look good. So you can think I'm important 'cause I'm going to go home on Monday, I'm going to go back to my house where my kids think that I'm, I'm OK mom, they like me. I'm not Zeus or anything. My husband thinks I'm pretty great. He's been with me for like 16 years. But I'm sure I know the crap out of him. You know, my parents like me, you know, they rely on me. I get to be of service to my family, my service to my Home group. I'm a service to my community. I'm a service to my employer.

Nothing special, I'm just a person,

a person that can be relied upon because I have spiritual principles working in my life and God allowing me to do things that I don't think I can do. So I show up and I'm able to do things and it's like, wow, I just was able to do something I didn't think I could do yesterday. Oh my God, you know, a high school dropout, I have a 9th grade education. I mean, I'm in Graduate School. That doesn't happen. That's not something that happens because, you know, just out of nowhere. That's God's grace coming into my life and allowing me to be able to

things that I was not capable of doing before.

I was practically illiterate. Well, I wasn't illiterate. I was just incorrigible, honestly. But the fact is, is that I was completely incapable of performing in a classroom and was thrown out of five high schools. I was thrown out of this, the short bus school for the emotionally disturbed kids. I have a 9th grade education.

I'm in Graduate School.

God, take away my difficulties, that victory over them, or bear witness those I would help thy power, thy love, and thy way of life, so that when I have a sponsee who is homeless and scared and afraid that she can't make it and can't live and can't function, how am I going to get a job? Walmart won't even hire me. I can say to her, if you do what I do and you do what my sponsor told me to do and you follow my direction, I can guarantee you

that you'll be able to do things that you never thought you were capable of.

And I can say, here's my experience,

high school dropout, Graduate School, high school dropout, Graduate School. That doesn't happen because I'm so special. It happens because God is removed that crazy thinking so I can actually pay attention and do homework and time management skills. There's all this discipline stuff that comes with the 12 steps. It's amazing when you have, you know, discipline and time management. There's a lot of stuff you can get done when you're not thinking about yourself.

Oh my God.

So the idea is I make this pact with God in the third step, and what I ask him to do is to fix the problems that are going on in my life, and I'm asking him to fix these things so I can serve him well. How do these things get fixed? 456-789-1011 and 12:00

So what I'm really doing is making an agreement with God to fix the things that are ailing me and a commitment to continue with the rest of the steps. And we leverage this. When you go back and we say look at what, what, what untreated alcoholism looks like. We have the physical allergy, the mental obsession, and the spiritual malady. We have a gross alcoholic mess. We have possibly living on a spiritual basis. And what happens if it fails? What happens if I work these steps and somehow I don't end up any better? Did I lose anything?