The Feet First Group in Quakertown, PA

Now it's time for me to introduce our speaker this evening, Carrie A. She's from a Way Out in Tannersville, PA. Please help me. Welcome, Kerry.

Hi, my name is Kerry. I'm an alcoholic,

my sobriety date is September 6th 1994. My Home group is a Way Up Big Book study group in Tannersville and my sponsors name is Peggy.

And whenever I give a talk, I always mention those three things because although it is God that has graced me with sanity and has removed my obsession for alcohol, it was these three things that helped me to get to God, you know. So I like to let you know that, you know,

it's important to have these things. It's important to be in all three sides of the triangle. I mean, I think that if you're around Alcoholics Anonymous long enough, our life gets very busy when we get into doing all kinds of things. We get into living life and that's really important. But it's also really important for me to stay grounded in Alcoholics Non assuming good active member of a a.

You know, it's funny, 'cause I,

I like to speak in a sense because I like to meet new people and I like to go to different groups and I get like to get the opportunity to see how other a as do things. And on the other hand, I really hate to speak one because I'm a natural liar. I want to make myself look a lot better than I am. And I can't do that from up here because that's not my job. My job is to stand here and to tell you that Alcoholics Anonymous works and to tell you why it works, how it works. And in a lot of ways, it's very difficult to talk about because I, in a lot of ways,

looking at the spiritual experiences that I've had as a result of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, they don't make sense to me. It seems to me absolutely insane that just doing these few simple things has changed my life so dramatically. I mean, I'm an alcoholic, which means I have a deadly disease. I have a disease in which has an abominable recovery rate, you know, and I'm sure if you, if you ask around a, you know enough. And I'm sure you guys have heard statistics, people talk about statistics all the time. The relapse rate of recovery rate in AA, you know,

and you know, in the forward to the second edition, they talk about what the recovery rate of Alcohol Anonymous was back when this book was well, during, during the second edition, which I believe was 1955. But you know, I'm not the a, a historian, so I'm going to say it's 1950s somewhere around there. Correct me later if I'm wrong, but the idea here is that it says that 50% of all people who were introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous silver debit once another 25 relapsed a couple times, came in, did the deal and sobered up and then the rest of the people improved. What

means that they were able to get periods of sobriety, which for an alcoholic is impossible because I have a disease that tells me that I need to drink no matter what. I have a disease that lies to me. I have a disease that tells me that I'm special, that nobody else has my experience. I have a disease that tells me that my problems are unique. And of course, all of us are incredibly unique. We're all individuals. We all have our own personal histories. We all come into Alcoholics Anonymous with whatever we experienced before we got here, right?

But this disease itself, this the symptoms of the disease are relatively

passe. You walk around and you're around AA enough. You hear things like, I always felt different. You hear things like I, I'm, I'm incredibly insecure. I'm full of fear. You hear things like once I start drinking, I can't control how much I drink. I have a mind that says it's a good idea to drink. And these things are, are really commonplace. And you hear in every a, a meeting, if you're in a good meeting that is. But in every a a meeting, you're going to hear these things because those are the symptoms of what it means to be an alcoholic and how that those symptoms express themselves

and us is the individual part of it. But there are some broad strokes that one can make to qualify one as being an alcoholic. I mean, I have a physical allergy, a mental obsession in the spiritual malady. Now I got sober to 18. So my drinking story

is interesting.

It's short, which I like. I'm actually pretty happy about that

because I think if it was any longer, I wouldn't be here.

I'm not going to I'm not going to be labor it. I'm going to give you a little bit because if there's anybody who's new to Alcohol Anonymous or somebody who doesn't know if they're an alcoholic and I describe what it looks like to be an alcoholic, I might help you today. So here's what here's what happened is basically I grew up in a

Irish Catholic household.

Now I'm not blaming anything on anybody. I'm an alcoholic because I'm an alcoholic. I stopped wondering why. I mean, I remember for the first couple years of being in a as I wonder like, well, I'm an alcoholic, but how did I get here? Why I'm an alcoholic? And at this point I'm like, I don't care, can't drink. I got to go to a, I got to be of service. These are wonderful things. I have a great life and I get to do things that normal people don't get to do. I'm good with it. I don't even wonder why I'm an alcoholic anymore. I'm OK with it. But here's the thing. As I grew up in a household, my parents were adult children of Alcoholics,

not Alcoholics. I'm one of five children. Four of us have darkened the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of us has not. She said things like, you know, she has a glass of wine and says that I'm sleepy. She calls, you know, wine, a nightcap. I was like, think I was like 10 years sober. I went on a cruise with my two older sisters. Being locked in a cabin for a week in the ocean with your two older sisters is an adventure in itself.

Principles of the program really helped me from getting, you know, being tossed overboard and things like that.

But, you know, my sister had a bottle of wine on the night table and she's like, is this going to bother you? And I'm like, absolutely not, because alcohol doesn't have power over me today.

I'm safe and protected. Do what you want to do. Bop to your drop, man. Now, I cleaned up some vomit, yes, but I was OK with that. They cleaned up enough of mine. But the thing was, is that one sister who's not an alcoholic would drink half a glass of wine and go to bed. And I have a very different reaction to alcohol than she does.

I remember being in gym class and I and, and they have like, you know, drug and alcohol awareness stuff, the Med dare crap that they do, they think they can scare Alcoholics and, and to not drinking, which is if my own experience doesn't scare me, whatever you have to say really doesn't.

So they would say things like, you know, alcohol is essential nervous system to press. And I'm like, I'm in 7th grade, I'm drinking. I'm drinking on a pretty regular basis. And I'm thinking, no, it's not.

I, you know, I drink alcohol and I'm up. I want to, I'm ready to go out. I'm ready to do things. I can have conversations, I can interact with people. I am raring to go. I don't get depressed. I don't get sleepy. Well, maybe after a bucket,

but I don't have that relationship or that physical reaction to alcohol. And that's what we call the allergy. Now there have been a lot of studies on this and this is not AI. This is scientific mumbo jumbo, which I happen to agree with, but I'm not going to talk about it here because it's not in our literature. But there, there we have what Doctor Silkworth had suspected that there was a physical difference between non Alcoholics and Alcoholics has come to be proven through scientific research. And the idea here is I metabolize alcohol differently

than the non alcoholic. That's a physical allergy. The mental obsession is the idea that I think that everybody drinks like me.

I think that everybody has the same experience I have with alcohol. And eventually, when that delusion was taken from me, because after a certain point, I realized that the people that I'm drinking with are not getting arrested. They're not breaking windows, they're not waking up in piles of their own vomit. They're not slicing their wrists. They're not doing these things that they're drinking, having a good time going home. Meanwhile, I'm lost in, you know, wandering around for days, you know, not knowing where I am,

You know, I realize that I'm having a different experience than they're having.

And ultimately it came down to this one very core concept with me when it comes to the the mental obsession, which is I don't care.

I don't care what's going to happen when I put alcohol in my body because I need it.

I need it and the consequences are irrelevant because the pain that I'm experiencing right here, right now is worth whatever I'm going to pay for later. And that brings us to the spiritual malady which produces that state. Now, the spirituality is that thing whether I'm tenure sober, 15 years sober or 15 days sober, we all have it. If you're an alcoholic, and that's the progressive part of our disease, because once you stop putting alcohol in your system, yeah, you know, you're in the sense that your tolerance for alcohol

things, that's progressive, you know. But as long as I don't put it into my system, I don't experience the consequences of that, right. Not so with the spiritual malady, the spiritual malady or the spiritual sickness, the way that Bill talks about it in the big Book.

That's a progressive aspect of our disease that continues to grow as we stay sober. And I found that as I've stayed sober, the longer I'm sober, the more I have to work in certain ways because of this ego, this pride, this inferiority being driven by 100 forms of fear of self delusion and self pity. I step on the toes of my fellows and they retaliate

seemingly without provocation, but I find it sometime made a decision based on self that placing the position to be hurt, that sort of stuff. Yeah, my sponsor made me read that over and over again for a couple years.

Yeah, fun. But the truth is that that's exactly what happens with me, is that I have a progressive spiritual illness that tells me that I'm unique. It tells me that I'm special. It tells me that that

I need more, I need now and that somehow in some way, I'm either insignificant

are overly qualified for you all.

And that spirit progressive spiritual disease is what causes that pain that makes drink look like a good idea. Once I've been separated from alcohol for an extended period of time now, I've always been able to put down alcohol. I was never able to stay away from it. And that's probably because my disease hadn't progressed to the point that it had and certain other people, because I did get sober at 18. And I hear a lot of people talk about it and they say things like, I wish I got sober at 18. You know, that's so great. You know, you lived your whole adult life sober. And I'm like,

yeah,

yeah, it was interesting. But I mean, part of it was, you know, I didn't get sober because I was having a good time. And I think that's something that that

we forget when we're here long enough was that, you know, that I wasn't having a good time. Alcohol was not solving my problems. I was lonely and afraid and devastated and I had nothing and no one. I remember being 16 years old

and I intended suicide. I had attempted suicide quite a few times and I died for two minutes. And I woke up a couple days later in the in the ICU and I remember hating God because he wouldn't take me. And for me, life was so incredibly painful with or without a drink, that to die seemed like the only solution that I could muster at that point. And to know that I couldn't even die, that I could die, but

I wasn't leaving this earth and I wasn't leaving the pain that I felt prior to that incident

made me

reject all concept of spiritual life because I felt like God didn't want me.

And I felt like God made me an alcoholic. He made my family suck. He made all these terrible things happen to me. And then he won't even let me get out of it.

And for me, from that point on, my relationship with God was very much about doing anything or anything, anything that I could do that would break the rules,

you know, I mean, it was all out war and I rejected. It wasn't that I didn't believe there was a God. I just hated him.

I hated God and anything God gave a crap about me, you know? So when you're in that state, you can't die, you can't drink, you can't not drink. And there's no way of functioning in society in any any meaningful manner. What do you do?

While had been in and out of AA since I was 13 years old, my dad said that several members of my family had darkened the doors of AA. I'm the only one who stayed.

So my parents were relatively familiar. They went to Al Anon. They knew about rehab, they knew about that sort of stuff. So I would get carted off to rehab every couple months. It was like, oh, Carrie's crazy again, Let's send her to rehab. They'll fix her, you know. And I came out with a big book and a step book and I have all my friends sign my big book and, you know, 3 boyfriends. I went in there with a boyfriend. I came out with three more.

It was great. I loved rehab. I got, you know, I got to, it was like Lord of the Flies, man, because I'm a teenager saying to rehab with other teenagers. All we did was bad things, very, very bad things. And so for me it was like kind of like Lord of the Flies. I look forward to rehab. You know, they gave me drugs prescribed,

which, you know, wasn't booze, but whatever. I had ready access to teenage boys and no parents. Awesome.

So really, so you know, I get shipped off to rehab and I come out and I'd be 10 times worse than when I went in, you know, because I, you know, there was no listening, there was no getting through to me. I'd sit in a, a meetings and there would be all old people and I'd be like, you know, you know what, you people, you have no idea what I'm experiencing and you're old and you know nothing. And I'm incredibly unique

and I got 10-15 more years of drinking in me, thank you very much. So, you know, you can take your book and you can put it where the sun don't shine and don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Thank you. You know, and that was really my attitude. So

having experienced that form of a, a, you know, and then being carded to meetings by my parents and dumped off and saying, you know, you need to get this signed. And because I had contracts and all the stuff they teach you and they teach the parents to do. And so they dumped me off in an, A, a meeting and I would run out the back and go to Newark

and then come back in a couple hours, you know, and tell him I had a great time at the diner. Yeah. And I had a coffee commitment. I would take the money that they would give me for the coffee commitment and use it to buy booze.

Yeah, I did all that stuff. So, I mean, my experience with a A was rehab. My experience with a A was, you know, young people's meetings, which I like to call liars and criers.

3090 dances in 90 days.

I thought, you know, I could date my way through young people's meetings and eventually I'd find the right guy who would make my life all better. I did. I married him. You know, we've been married for 16 years or 717 years. Oh my God, 17 years. But you know, that was actually mistake. That worked out really well for me. You know, he had like 3 days clean and he was an ex-con who had just gotten out of prison and he was 24 and I was 17. That looked like a really good idea.

My Irish Catholic parents are going to love him.

They do, by the way. They like him more than they like me.

They really do. He chats with my mother. But, umm, you know, so, so I mean, I'm giving you an idea of what I thought a a was because in the, in that experience, you know, between rehabs, young people's meetings, lying and crying and think not taking this disease seriously, you know, it's no wonder that I couldn't stay sober. But part of it was that nobody told me. And maybe they were telling me and I couldn't hear because of how blocked I was. But where I got sober, I mean, the steps were not something you actually

works. There were things that you thought about, you know, you read the 12 and 12 and you thought about what you would do when you made amends one day.

You know, you I remember my sponsor gave me a higher I, I said I wouldn't believe in God. So she gave me this really big beautiful amethyst rock, which then I got drunk and left at my parents house and my mom threw it out.

So the question is like, was that really a higher power if my mom could like throw it in the garbage, you know? So like they meant well, but they really didn't have a message that that that had depth and wait for somebody like me. And maybe they were able to for whatever reason, stay sober, but I couldn't. So what it eventually happened was I not only did I lose faith in God, but I lost faith that AI could work for me, hence the suicide attempt. Hence dying, waking up, not being dead, being really pissed about that and nowhere to go.

And so I drank for another two years and

I met my husband. We I moved in with him in like a week. I was already living. See, I had this thing and this is the women will identify with this. And I don't care about talking this from the podium because I'm not that woman anymore. But I had this thing where, like if you had a wallet and you were a dirty old man, you were so mine.

We've got to think about it like I'm not legal to buy booze. I have no actual money nor any skills to get money. And I wasn't necessarily going to go out in the corner because

I didn't have to. All I had to do was go. I'm jailbait. Can I move in? It worked very well for me for a long time. And it was funny because I I was living with another jailbait guy who had two ex wives, a couple kids and I'm 17 and and I meet my husband and I fall madly and stupidity with him. I move in with him in a week and we go out and drink.

And the reason why I talk about this and this is this for me was the thing that taught, taught me the true nature of alcoholicism. I went out to drink

and I had had some a little bit of time sober, you know, a little over a year. I, I was asking it from alcohol, but I wasn't asking it from a non conference approved substances, if you get my drift. And I had,

I went out and I said, I'm just going to drink this one night and I'm going to go right back to AA tomorrow. And I had at certain points been able to do that, go out for a couple nights, come back to AA, let you guys like patch me up, lick my wounds, find some stupid, dirty old man, move in with him, you know, and start the cycle all over again. And what had happened was I had every intention of coming back to a A and I couldn't, I couldn't stop drinking.

And I would get up in the morning and I would say, I'm going to go to a meeting today.

I'm going to go. And I would walk and I would leave my house to walk to a meeting. And I'd be drunk before I got there. And I would beg God as a God, please help me to just go back to AI. Please help me to go back to AI. And I couldn't stop drinking. And for me,

I had never really wanted a A. I'd never really wanted God. I was angry and indignant and a brat. And then when when I had hit a point in my drinking where I was completely, utterly hopeless and all I wanted to do was stop, I couldn't.

And for me, that was such a scary, scary thing to be 18 years old and drinking every day and I can't stop. I can't even pause it. I just can't stop.

And I remember

my husband, at a certain point, he had some friends from AA who called him and wanted to go to like a BBQ or something. And I knew that if he went out and hung out with these people, sobriety is like contagious, right? He was going to stop drinking and he couldn't stop drinking because I'm not going to stop drinking. I can't stop drinking. So I locked myself in the bathroom and cried and carried on until he promised to come home and drink with me after he was done, which I since made amends for, by the way.

So this is what it looks like for me and this is what it looks like to be an alcoholic.

And it says in the big book, the most ardent desire or wish is of no avail. That's the nature of powerlessness for me in my experience is wanting to stop drinking desperately and not being able to and the idea and I don't know why I stopped on September 6th. I don't know why I woke up that morning and I the power was, was in me to be able to go to an, a, a meeting. I don't know why because it doesn't make any sense to me. I had wanted it and I tried it every day for four months and I couldn't stop.

And that day, for whatever reason, I woke up. I was sleeping in somebody's basement because I was homeless at this point. I packed my garbage bag, which I carried around with me with all my worldly possessions, and I was able to walk to that a a meeting without getting drunk. And I went to another one and I stayed in a a like that for two years with no recovery, no real step work, no real God just hanging on.

And after about two years of being sober,

all I wanted to do was die again, because that's the progressive spiritual illness that I talked about that I can that God graced me with the ability to, to not drink. And part of it was, and I really believe this is for the first two years or the first year and a half of my recovery,

I, I had gotten pregnant within in detox. Actually I was detoxing, I'm pretty sure when I got pregnant with my daughter. So I found out that I was pregnant when I was about 60 days sober. And for the first year and a half to two years, my daughter was my higher power.

She was my only reason to even show up and come to AA. The only power that I can conceive of that was a power greater than myself. The problem was was that didn't fix the spiritual sickness within me, didn't fix the selfishness. It didn't fix the fear. All it did was keep me away from alcohol

and the selfishness, the dishonesty, the resentment and the fear that was within me was the thing that was pushing me back to it.

So after about two years sober, I didn't want to drink. I just wanted to die. And all I could do was look at my daughter who was about it, a little over a year old, and think,

she's not going to have a mother anymore.

I can't be her mother.

And on some bizarre twist, I walked into a meeting in Staten Island and there was this guy there. He was from California, and he was on his way to go study with the Dalai Lama. And he was in this meeting. And mind you, I'm a brat. I'm a punk rock chick. I carried around knives. I'm covered in what? Not anymore, but I'm covered in tattoos. I had green, purple, pink, orange hair, you know, You know, if my head wasn't shaved, you know, So I was really attractive,

you know.

Umm, so I'm sitting in this meeting and there's this guy. He looks like a David Crosby had sex with Captain Kangaroo and they had a love child. This is what this guy looks like

and I'm an utter brat. So I'm sitting in this meeting and this guy's talking about the nine step and I'm listening to him talk about making the amends. You have to make all the amends. You have to do this. You have to do that. And I walked right up to him and I'm like, how dare you say that they harm me more than I harm them. They don't deserve my Evan Believe and believe and bleep, bleep weep amends. They should be grappling on my feet. They made me this sick. And he just laughed. I mean, he really just was like,

oh, I have you.

And he gave me that smile that I give people that I hate now I hated them and they hate and I get that smile like I am, I have got you. And he said to me, he's like, well, he's asked me these questions as things that I just talked about. What does it mean to be an alcoholic? He asked me questions about that. He qualified me. That's something no one had ever done that before. No one had ever asked me, you know, do you think you're an alcoholic? They assume because I parked my stupid butt in the chair, I was well, guess what? Not everybody who parks their butt in the chair and Alcohol is anonymous is an alcoholic.

And it's my job as a member of a A to talk to them and say, Gee,

do you got these symptoms? No. OK, well, you know, how does that express itself? Oh, oh, you know, you're, you know, you're a cocaine addict. Guess what? We got a fellowship for you. Let me take you there. Because not everybody comes to a is an alcoholic. And that was something that I learned. And this is something this guy taught me. And so he he qualified me as to what it means to be an alcoholic.

And when I answer the questions, it gets appropriately. He he pulled somebody over and he said you're going to do step work with this guy. And it was a guy and I hated men. They were wallets and private parts, and they had no other use.

And now I have to. This guy is going to save my life. Teach me this book. No. No way. But I was dying, and I was afraid. And I knew that I had to do something. So I was like, all right, OK, you know, I'll. I'll do it a little bit. But if he gets weird, I'm out of here.

And I had started to begin to have an experience with the 12 steps. And since then I've been graced with many wonderful sponsors and wonderful experiences. I mean, I'm probably one of the luckiest women in Alcoholics Anonymous because I've had such wonderful teachers, you know, and it's not because of me. It's actually because my husband is really awesome and that he always has the awesome sponsors and I can go up to them and be like, hey, can I have that paperwork too? You know, Oh, you're doing that. Let me ask you about it. And so then, you know, by virtue of having my husband

gets over with me and him having wonderful sponsors and me having wonderful woman sponsors, I got the best of both worlds. I got I got to pick my husbands braids, pick his sponsors brains and pick my sponsor springs. I was a complete and utter AA slut. If you had recovery, you had a process and you had something that was going on, I was going to be in your corner sitting on your lap, begging you for the answers. And it worked for me, you know, and the idea was I was very lucky that I've had some wonderful teachers. And I don't mean to sound, you know, blase about it. I mean, I'm very grateful

people that God put in my life, this one man I met years later and to be able to tell him that a 10 minute conversation he had with me is the reason why I'm standing here today was a beautiful thing. And he had no idea I was a blip on his screen and he changed my life. I mean, that's the beautiful thing about God's. The universe and the way that God works is we have no idea the impact that we have on other people. I have no idea. If I knew I'd be a arrogant SOB. So the great thing is I don't know. I get to walk through this world, putting my shoes on, you know, one foot at a time

and show up. And the fact that I get to help somebody without even realizing that I did or without realizing the impact of something that I might have said had on them, it's a beautiful thing. It's greater than any high that I've ever gotten while I was an active alcoholic.

So I began to have an experience with the steps. I learned what it meant to be an alcoholic. And that brings us to that wonderful point in the second step where the question is, is you know what you are, but what are you going to do about it? That's really the question of the second step is now that you know what you are,

we have two choices. We can die an alcoholic death or live on a spiritual basis. What are you going to do? I can continue to blot out the intolerableness of my situation and I can do that in a lot of ways. I can do that with men. I can do that with food, exercise, money, designer jeans. I got a lot of things that I could blot out the intolerance of my situation or I can accept spiritual help, but that spiritual help has conditions means that I have to follow direction. It means that I have to start listening to something other than my own brain. Because ultimately comes down to this

is that my thinking owns me.

My mind wears me like a hat

and the things that I think are completely insane, they're insane and demented. The big book says that that we were warped and sickened. Bill doesn't really hit when he when when the original, when the writers of the big book wrote this stuff down, they were not like saw selling it in the least warped and sickened, spiritually sick, you know, driven by 100 forms of fear, self delusion and self pity. I mean, like, really, That's pretty clear that I'm not a, well, cat.

There would be something wrong with me,

you know, and the idea here is that, and I love this and it says this in the agnostic. It says that the God idea works. Our ideas don't. And I think for me, out of all the aspects of or when we look at the second step and we really look at it, you know, we come to two different, two conclusions, One that I have, I either accept that I have this disease or I don't. And I'm willing to accept spiritual help.

And accepting spiritual help means that my ideas don't work and the God idea does. It's a natural progression of that. And there's a lot more to it. But ultimately, my whole life hinges on what I'm going to answer in those questions

because the fact is, as I lack the power to be able to put into action the things that I think or know to be right. See, ultimately it comes down to this thing is that I lack the power to live a life that I know I should be living. I could know that I'm not supposed to lie, cheat, and steal. I shouldn't. I could know that I'm supposed to be a good person. I could know that I'm supposed to be of service to God and others. But I lack the ability to do that because of my own spiritual sickness, because I'm blocked from that power.

And is that blocked that that clog in those arteries that give me that spiritual heart attack that bring me back to booze because it makes booze look like a good idea. Because the pain that I'm experiencing in the present is greater than the future pain that might be out there possibly if I pick up that drink. So ultimately it comes down to how am I going to get access to that power? How does that happen?

Well, the steps are the whole intent of the big book in the 12, The 12 steps, and the program that Elko Anonymous is enabled me to get access to that power. Ultimately, it's a matter of waking up to realize that that power is present here, right? And here right now, I'm just too dumb to notice it.

Because the fact is that if God is everything

right, I either accept God is everything. God is no thing ultimately comes down to this. Thing is, if God is a part of everything that I do and involved in every aspect of my life, then it's not a matter of getting in touch with God or finding God. But waking up to realize that God has been here all along and I've just been blind, blinded by my own self will and my own designs and demands that I put on the world and myself. I had an idea what my life was supposed to look like and who I was supposed to be and I was very upset that I didn't live up to those ideals. Well, for one thing, I wanted to be

tall, blonde with really big boobs. I'm a short, dark Irish woman.

It was a cruel joke.

I wanted to be really smart. See, I'm smart enough to know that I'm not that smart. I want to be like crazy smart like I wanted to be like Goodwill hunting smart.

I killed too many brain cells for that. I really don't think I had the potential to be that smart anyway, but I like to think that maybe it was just rain cell dying that caused that, you know? So there are things these grandiose ideas that I had about who I should be. I should be beautiful and I should be intelligent. I should be graceful at all times. By the way, I'm an absolute klutz and I am completely socially awkward. So much so it's ridiculous. And I the beautiful thing is God has such a great sense of humor that I'm completely socially awkward. But then I'm,

I did to speak at conferences all over the world and stuff and I have to talk to people that I don't know and I just want to hide under my chair. It's fun. God has a sense of humor about that sort of stuff. God bless him. So I have all these things and I have this idea of who I should be and I have this person that I am. And The thing is, is I was very angry at myself and God for not letting me be what I thought I should be. And then when I got sober and I started to work these steps and I realized I had all these unrealistic expectations on,

on you and on me. And ultimately what it was is I expected you all to give me myself esteem. I expected you all to provide me with, with a sense of pride. I expected you all to give me emotional security, to fulfill my ambitions, to to provide me with money and, and, and all the men should worship me and the women should be jealous of me at all times,

you know, And I expected that this should happen. And if you fail to do any of those things, well, I got angry, right? I got it resentful,

you know, because I had unrealistic expectations of what God's world was supposed to look like and who Carrie was supposed to look like in God's world. And it came down to this idea that my ideas about life did not work and God's ideas do. So how do I, how do I access the vision of what God's will is for me and be able to live that in a daily basis? Well, it comes down to this, you know, we, we look at then that brings us to the third step. And the third step is simply a decision for me to seek this experience with God and myself

because when it comes down to it,

sponsors a a Home group. All of those things aside, it's the relationship between myself and my higher power and alcohol that decide what my life looks looks like. It's the sponsor, the friends, the Home group, the fellowship, the commitments that we take that create the environment that allow that relationship to grow. But ultimately, when you strip all of that away, it's about, it's about what I believe about myself, about God's universe and about alcohol

that allow me to live successfully.

So I had to take a look at these things and ultimately it came down to this idea that I had to make a pact with God. You ever really look at the third step prayer? The third step prayer is a contract, man. Look at it. You know, we ask God, we say, you know God,

I want to be in your CRE. I want you to create with me and do with me as thou will, right? Well, what? I'm an active alcoholic and when I'm running on stuff, well, or I'm an untreated alcoholic, I'm not a part of God's creation. I'm creating the world in in my own image, right? And I'm saying you guys should be the way I think you should be so that I don't have to be uncomfortable because you all should make me comfortable at all times and I should never feel OK ever.

So I'm creating the world in my image. So when I'm, when I take that third step prayer, when I get down on my knees with my sponsors, when I say this prayer every day, what I'm saying to God is I'm, I want to be a part of his creation and I'm going to stop dictating what creation looks like, right? I asked God to take away my difficulties. What one of my difficulties? Well, myself, for one of them

I asked God to take away my difficulties, that victory over them would bear witness to those that would help of thy love, thy power and they way of life. So I'm saying all these difficulties, these are the difficulties that we see

in our 4th step and that we talk about our fifth step and we make amends 4 in our 9th step. These are the difficulties that are standing in my way of me being useless, useful to God and others. I ask God to take away them, but I ask them to take away them not from my own comfort, but so that I can be a vision of what God's will is for me and others, so I can be example of what spiritual healing looks like. I'm not asking God to heal me from my comfort, I'm asking God to heal me for yours.

I have to be relieved of the bondage itself.

And again, so that I could better do his will. I'm not asked to be relieved of the bondage itself so that Carrie can be comfortable in her life. Guess what? Being of service sucks sometimes. And it's really uncomfortable, which up in the middle of the night, people throw up on you. They steal your stuff. I mean, I just had my wedding ring and my engagement ring, you know, stolen a couple months ago, you know, by an alcoholic that we were helping. God bless him. I really hope that that bottle was worth it. And I love him. And if he wants to get sober, he's welcome back in my house. I'm just going to lock up my jewelry, man.

It was just stuff. But here's the deal. Isn't being absurd sometimes could be a pain in the high knee?

The whole point of me asking God to relieve me of the bond yourself is not so that I can be comfortable, so that I can be of service to God because I've been a service to myself, my emotions, my thoughts, and I have worshipped my mind

and I let my mind wear me like a hat.

And what I make a contract with God to fix that. But my deal is I got to serve him and I got to serve him in the way that it looks good. It looks to him, not to me because I served you in a way that makes me look good. So I can always be important and special because that's what I really want. I want to be in as a superstar in AA and my sponsor used to tell me all the time, used to say you're the only person who wants to be a somebody in a program full of nobodies. What does that make you?