The topic of "Trust God" at the Sea Isle Big Book workshop in Sea Isle, NJ

Today, presenting on Trust God, in the first three steps, we have Chris B from Philadelphia.

My name is Chris Brennan. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Like to thank Chris for that opening act that's pretty tough to follow. He was very good. He gave me a lot to work off of and a lot to think about. If you're of like mind, which I'm sure if you're here today, you probably are, he got you excited. If not, he got you irritated. So if that be the case, just hang in there.

I'm usually the guy who in my mind is like on that side of things and he make me look like a choir boy. I guess today, but that's good. My sobriety date is March 2nd, 1994. I've been sober since then. My Home group is called Break down the book. It's a one paragraph at a time big book study, Holy Family University, Northeast Philadelphia every Friday night 7:00. If you're ever in the area, please combine and join us.

And that's the particulars Bachelorette throws, right? Etcetera.

That's about all you need to know about me. I am a Philly boy. I was born and raised in Philadelphia. Row house, Philadelphia, Rocky, all that good stuff. I summered under the fire plugs. Not in Manchester, Vermont, like the Wilsons and Ebby and the boys.

And I have the chance today of speaking on the first three steps, which I've been studying the big book. And like Chris said, it's not an intellectual pursuit. I've been studying it for about. I've been sober a little over 17 years. So probably for 16 years, somewhere in there, I've been studying the book. Does that mean I know it? Yeah. Does it mean I can do it on any given day? Not really. But it means that maybe I can help you with it. It might make me a better teacher with you, if you will. Or sponsor.

And to me, that's the only time, as Chris was saying, it really has Life is when I sit down with somebody and go through this stuff. Doesn't really do me much good on my own, knowing a lot of this stuff, all the spiritual books I've ever read, et cetera, on my own,

very limited value. But when I sit down with a new guy about a Dunkin' Donuts or a Starbucks somewhere or wherever on the street somewhere, unbelievable value. And I think that's what Chris was touching on. That's what you need to get to, right? That, that, as we say in Step 12, giving it away

sponsorship me, having God hopefully work through me and given to you what he gave to me. And that is unbelievable. That's an experience you must not miss, as Bill says. But unfortunately, the other side of that coin is many others do miss it because of a lot of the things that Chris talked about.

I know my experience with a A and I got sober. I was in a rehab called Riverside House in Northeast Philadelphia in March of 94 and I met a man in there who was a night counselor, a guy named Bobby C, who

something about him I related to. But he was one of the few guys early on that was talking about those things hanging on the wall back there and not just group stuff and a lot of that fluff that we add on to it. I was sent to anger group when I was in rehab all the time and I really did this thing. I don't know why I never felt angry.

You know what I mean? Maybe it was because I would say something I'm not angry sending me to anger group for but I never really felt angry. I don't know, I said I'm quiet. I'm German. Maybe you get that confused with anger. I don't know, but I I did. When I left 28 days there,

one of the hardest things ever had to do in life. We always say it's like, yes, get another guy to be your Valentine. I asked that guy to sponsor me. You know what I mean? It's kind of like, I know you're busy, but maybe, do you think possibly you could help me out? And it's kind of funny because he did exactly what Chris was alluding to. He said, I noticed you bought a big book when you were in here. Yeah. I got to be honest with you, I haven't. I haven't read it. I said I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a big reader.

He's like, that's OK. You know how to read, right? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I got that. And he said, I also noticed you bought a 12 and 12. Yeah. He said, I'd like you to put that in your drawer for now, and I'll tell you when to take it out. And 17 years later, he's never told me to take it out. And that is not a shot at the trauma trial. I love the 12:00 and 12:00, but I think it confuses people because, as he said, their essays on the 12 steps, that would be me

speaking to you on something that's never happened to me. I can do that

if you give me the opportunity. You know what I mean? Put one of these in front of me. I'll speak on anything,

right? And that's, like I said, it's a second worst thing to give an alcoholic is a microphone. And I'll speak on and hopefully eloquently,

but it'll be hollow. It'll be speaking on something I really haven't had an experience with. And that's unfortunately the only thing that matters in the spiritual world is not learning the 12 steps, not talking about them, but actually taking them and feeling them. One of my AA heroes, if you will,

and I'll probably talking about the first three steps. I'll try to keep it to three main non alcoholic figures. Two doctors and a minister. That would be a good name of a sitcom, right? Two doctors and a minister, Silk Worth, Carl Young and a guy named Sam Shoemaker.

And one of my favorite spiritual quotes of all time from this guy Shoemaker was

he was talking about religion, I think when he wrote it, but you could apply it to a A or anything in the spiritual world. He said it has become the imitation of an example instead of the hearing of a voice. And that's what kind of what AA is trying to teach us. Stop trying to imitate what Bill or Mary did and experience it for yourself and hear this voice and live by it and learn to trust it and teach other people how to do that.

That to me, like when I came into. Yeah, yeah. I didn't hear anybody talk about anything like that. I'm also a product of those Arkansas guys, Joe and Charlie's I I got. So the stepping stones in Northeast Philadelphia owe my life to that place. I didn't necessarily learn recovery there, but it's a,

I heard a friend of mine do a talk once and he said, yeah, the clubhouse is of a, a are like operating rooms, you know what I mean? They'll when you're dying, you know what I mean? If you get shot on a Saturday night, he said they're very good at putting you back together. He said if you get shot on a Saturday night in Manhattan, you want to go to Bellevue.

It's insane. But they can put you back together. But after a couple weeks you want to move up, up, up 10 a little bit and get a little private room, You know what I mean? You don't want to hang out in Bellevue too long. And that's kind of the way I look at clubhouses created, putting you back together, then get into the book, move on, et cetera. And that's what's important for people like us that claim to be into the literature is not only to go to literature based meetings, which I do a lot,

but to also take it to other meetings, take it to your local clubhouse. It's not easy. I know in your head it's not hard. It's all in your head. But you know, sometimes you think of what are they thinking about me? And nobody wants to hear this. And it's not your fault really, it's up to God. You just do it and watch what happens. And if they're not listening to you, no big deal. What's it going to hurt you? And I really try to do that. I go to

non literature based meetings often to remind me why I go to literature based meetings.

It doesn't take long, believe me, you know what I mean. I feel like an alien after about 5 minutes in there. But it needs to be done. And that's where our work, part of where our work can be done. Coming into AA for me at age 33 after about a dozen years on Wall Street.

Coming in there as a young kid, 19 years old, right out of high school,

invincible, you know what I mean? Going to take on the world did well. That's my problem in life. I do well. I got a lot of that potential they talk about and I test well and

and then I made a good career out of it as a young kid. I don't know if you're familiar with Wall Street. I worked in Philadelphia and believe it or not, Philadelphia is part of Wall Street. I know we're kind of like a little stepbrother, but it is, it's called that. And going down there as a young kid and

you, it's like a breeding ground for alcoholism and other things. It's not only is it acceptable, it's encouraged and it's just a part of life. But if you're like me growing up in, in a, in an inner city neighborhood, I mean, everybody tracks. Everybody I ever knew drank. I never sat around wondering why I drank or anything like that. It's like when you get to a certain age, all you can look forward to is hanging on the corner with the older guys and drinking with them. And that was really the only goal I ever

life. I'm the son of a Marine and he always wanted me. When you're in Paris Island, you leave your Lima beans and all that and I'd be like, yeah, right, I ain't going to Paris Island. And or he wanted me to his dreams for he had played my dad played a little minor League Baseball. He wanted me to be a baseball player. But after about sophomore year of high school, when you start doing other things, practice goes out the window. And I really didn't have the time for that. Well, the other thing, you always want me to be a lawyer and I, I just that sound like a lot of schooling,

you know what I mean? And I just came through four tough years of high school and I didn't, I can honestly tell you from sophomore year on, I never took a book home. I never really took anything in life seriously. I don't know, maybe I'm just wired that way. I don't really have a lot of serious bones in my box. It takes a lot for me to consider it is. And I just like, to me, life is one big

lounge act, you know what I mean? And I work with the material that's in front of me and just kind of go through life like that.

But I did well down there and I got a reputation for myself. And over the years things got a little bit. I never, like Chris said, I never attributed anything to drinking. When it's like a, you know how people say you can't even see what's right under your nose? Well, maybe that's the problem with alcoholism. It's so close to us, you can't see it. That would be the last thing you would ever, you know, in a tribute to your problems. And it was so close to me that I couldn't see that was the problem.

Looking back on it, I remember people over the years in work offering to send me to rehab, whatever that was. And I would just laugh it off. Rehab. You kidding me? What are you going with me? You know what I mean? These are people I was drinking with and whatever. So I thought they were kidding. But they told me years later they were serious. And that's how you know you're bad when the people

you know, you drink and do other things where they're offering to put you away. That's not a good sign.

I also suffer from that blackout thing. I I never really thought about it. I just thought I don't remember a lot of stuff. Well, he said, that's what a blackout Asian moron. And, you know, I mean, I'd go to bed in Philadelphia and wake up in Salt Lake City or over my time. I remember coming to walking down the, the Dallas airport, down a hallway. It was like a Monday morning and I called work and they're like, where you at? I'm like, I'm in Dallas airport and my partners like why?

I said I have no idea. I just, I just kind of like came to walking towards these pay phones and that used to happen to me regularly. You know what I mean? And I just thought that's part of drinking, you know, you have fun. It was a badge of carriage. You know what you did last night? No, Oh man, you know, And then as you get older,

that a little more embarrassing and some of the things you do you really don't want publicized so much. But

I guess towards the the the middle of that decade I spent down there, I had a couple things happen that looking back were a direct result of alcohol, but I didn't see it that way. And Long story short is I lost the ability to work all together after about a decade down there. Was pretty much asked to leave and not come back and they meant it

and I did. One day I left my briefcase Sport coat, never went back.

Moved in like all heroes at 30 years old with mom and dad and thank God for them, right, that I came back at 30 and

tried to get some jobs, you know, because I knew I could really go. I could talk, I could, I could get a job and do some work. But I wasn't real good at showing up all the time. And those intervals got pretty short. And by

by the early 90s, I had lost the ability to work altogether. This kid who was once the pride of the family, I have two older sisters and I would show up on holidays in a limousine, they tell me with extravagant gifts for everybody and all that stuff. In the early 90s, I lost the ability to work all together, became a thief and got arrested regularly and was just waiting to die. I was on the streets except for I had one set of clothes and I had my father. My mother had passed away.

I had my father's house, so I would go regroup in his basement at night. And it was just a matter of how you're going to read about I had been stabbed, I had been beat up with a gun. All the things that happen out there. And I really never, I never wanted to take my own life. I didn't want to leave that legacy on my dad. I thought he deserved more than that. I didn't mind stealing his money and all that stuff, but I didn't want to embarrass him like that. So as a matter of it was just going to happen eventually. And

I know some people call it a moment of clarity in AA. I don't know if I've ever had a moment of clarity in my life.

I'd like to thank God interceded and I woke up after getting locked up Presidents weekend 1994 and asked for help. To this day I don't know why. I wasn't trying to get sober or anything like that. I, my, my sisters came over and they,

they got me into this rehab, this 28 day program, which sounded extreme. And I packed like I was going on a cruise, you know what I mean? I had no idea what sobriety was or AA or anything like that. And then that night, the first night in rehab was what I celebrate. That was the last time I ever had anything mood altering, let's say,

and that was March 2nd, 1994. When I get out of that rehab, like I said, I asked that man to sponsor me. I had a little bit of an out though he was sick at the time, so I didn't want to bother him, so I didn't call him. So I went to the clubhouse meetings three times a day. I I had a love affair with alcohol. It's anonymous from the beginning to fellowship, and I'm very clear today on the difference between the fellowship and the program.

Two vitally important things, two different powers. You could say you really need to have both,

but they're two completely separate things and I didn't know that in the beginning. And I went to three meetings a day and had a little job, Electric said. I worked for a friend of mine that had a landscape in business, so I made a couple dollars on a nice tan and I was getting in pretty good shape. And other than that,

what are you going to do? What about your past? I don't know. I don't know. It's like dealing with that right now, what you do in your future. I have no idea. And I was just kind of waiting for that miracle to happen, as they say, mistakenly, as if you just wait for that to happen. And you know, our book tells us later on that you can make that miracle happen by doing some of this work that Chris alluded to earlier. And I didn't know that. I thought you just came to a A. And if you showed up regularly, this miracle just happens to you.

But you may die waiting for that. I wouldn't suggest that. So I I'm in Alcohols Anonymous. I made all the mistakes everybody makes about eight months. And if I went to a meeting where there was a book on the table, the first year, it was strictly by accident.

I really had no intention of, I always thought, what is a contents of a book gonna tell a smart guy like me, 'cause I, I don't read. I mean, I, I know how to read, like I said, but I don't, I'm not a big reader, which is kind of ironic because my dad was the biggest reader I've ever met in my life. He was the smartest, funniest guy ever met in my life. And he tried so hard to pass that on to me and I just rejected it. And the ironic thing is I spent the last 16 years studying one book. So I guess he's smiling somewhere

and

eight months over the, you know, the same mistake that met the woman of my dreams. You know what I mean. And I was mistaken and and my sponsor would give me when I would ask him good advice. You know what I mean. I did this is actually one of the few things I ran by him. I said, Bob on the I'm thinking about Dayton, a woman in front of meeting. What do you think about that? And she had been sober for a while. And this is the kind of answers he would give me, which was one another reason I never called him. He'd say, well, all right, Chris, let's look. Let's look at

holistically, let's step back for a minute. You got any money? You even really have a job, get a house, you have a car, you can have a drivers license. And the answer was no to all those. And he would say, what do you realistically have to offer another person besides the obvious?

And yeah, yeah, I got you, Bob. And you know, we don't listen. I moved in with her shortly after that. And that ended horribly. I was totally blind to it. And it really, it really was an ugly situation. And I guess about a year sober, a couple things collided. One was these Arkansas guys,

and there's a guy, Bob Oh, who spoke in Cherry Hill, NJ, at a conference, and somebody just gave me the tape recently and he talked about this group out of Minnesota called the Golden Slippers. There were seven guys from AA that couldn't stay sober, hence the name. And they came up with a novel idea. They had like a little meeting between them and they come out of novel idea that they were going to stop intellectualizing the book, stop talking about it, and they were going to open it up and do what it said and see what happens.

And none of them ever drank again. And the guys that I didn't hear this guy personally, but the guys I was hanging out with at the clubhouse did. And I figured if they affected them because they were morons, if they affected them to that extent, maybe I should listen to this guy. And I did and I kind of got

what they were attracted to. And he was talking about Joe and Charlie. And this is mid 90s. So those take meetings were rare, but they were around and we started going to them. We incorporated that once or twice a week we would do a a Joe and Charlie meeting. Of course, the 12 and 12 step meeting, which the only problem is they're reading out of the wrong book. I mean, other than that, it's a great meaning, but

they're trying to make something happen that hasn't happened. And what it will do, in my experience,

it'll fill you with a lot of head knowledge. Like Chris said, working the steps intellectually. The worst thing you can do in AAA, I think,

is to agree with the steps. I don't kill you, right? The book says we have a solution and you ain't gonna like it. So if you're sitting there new and agreeing with these steps, you might want to take a look at that. You know what I mean? And because I always equated, if I agree with what you're talking about, it's kind of like doing it. And it couldn't be further from the truth that has killed so many people sitting there going, well, I do that. Well, I turned my will over. Well, I admit when I'm wrong.

There's a short version of the steps and there's a long version in our book and a lot of the things we do to study that, etcetera. And you got to get to know the long version. There's a lot of good stuff in there

and I admit it, for a year in AAI was an alcoholic, but I didn't really mean it. You know what I mean? I didn't know what that meant. And

yeah, I say my name is Chris on this or that. The other thing I would give you dabbling with other substances because I kind of kind of felt like I carried more weight, you know what I mean? But alcoholic kind of was a bad word. Got a little stigma to it. I'm not some old guy laying on a vent somewhere. I'm a slick dude. I'm a stockbroker really. Well, I haven't been in a while, but when I'm working, that's what I do. And,

and until I, I really opened that book and started going through the big book with my sponsor who kind of came back in, he had never left. I just brought him back into the mix at the same time. And we, we kind of formally went through the steps with kind of what we'll talk about now. And that was a

actually taking these steps. I didn't even know what it meant to be an alcoholic. I, I,

I go out in the linen, say most of the people in 17 years I've ever met Naye have never taken the steps. And it's not a shot against them. They, they wouldn't have to. They're not taught to. It's like a foreign idea, especially doing it with any sense of urgency, you know what I mean? Which is kind of

a necessary thing, this desperation that you have when you're new. We come into a A. And if you slow people down, unfortunately that that urgency goes away. That desperation goes away. And it's very hard to get somebody at that point to take the 12 steps. They'll do the intellectual version and they may stay sober for years and years and years, but it's not the same. It's not the same. And you'll never know what it's like to sit down and really give that to somebody, which is the whole key.

We went through the doctor's opinion, the sky silk work that I talked about who basically if you want to break alcoholism into three parts problem solution program of action Silk worth is accredited with given us what the problem is. He was a doctor, not an alcoholic little dude. They about 5 foot two. He made me look tall, a little guy with blue eyes. The little doctor that loved drunks, a great book on them written by his nephew or something like that.

And he was at a hospital in New York City, which is where Bill Wilson happened to be at the time. Towns hospital. He had lost all his money in the market crash of the Wall Street connection and he had to take this job there and for room and board or different stories on how he ended up there. But he was a

a student of people like us, you could say one of his jobs, I believe at one point was the government had sent him to China to find a cure for opiate addiction, which we could probably know he did that, but you would never know that. But so he studied people like us. He was not one of us, but he was intrigued by us. And he always had this sense in his head that people were like us. We're not just bad people

and not doing this on purpose

or not stupid or something like that, but there had to be something else going on. And he came up with this theory. They called his opinion, right? He didn't sign the original manuscript because it was only some quack doctor's opinion. A lot of people laughed at him, right? That's why if you get an original version of the big Book, it says very truly yours dot dot, dot

in the 1950s, like he said when they classified alcoholism as a disease, he wasn't stupid. He said, sure, put my name in there, and he got a lot of credit. But Silkworth basically is telling us, in the doctor's opinion, what definition of what alcoholism is. And it wasn't what I thought. And he said it's twofold. It's physical and it's mental

really, not rocket science. There's a physical component which you must believe, right? It's not just mental. Many of us come into a A and we lock so much in on the mental part of it that we completely miss the physical part of it, which the importance of that is that helps to get somebody when they're new, hopeless and scared,

which is what we're trying to do. A lot of times if you're working with or if you share in a meeting something, oh, you're gonna scare the newcomer or something like that. We're trying to, right? You're not gonna take the 12 steps unless you're scared, right? You're not looking for God unless you're scared. So he came out with this theory that we get in an exaggerated effect when we drink alcohol. Abnormal. He called it an allergy. If you use another book, that goes great with the big book

Websters Dictionary for smart people. See, I'm so bright, I can never, I could never do something like that. I would have to fake it. If you said, what's this mean? I kind of know and I might even be close to it. But what I learned is when you look up definitions, there's different connotations of words. And sometimes if you have five or six different definitions, one just stands out at you and changes the whole sentence. And so I started looking at words and allergy means

abnormal reaction, any substance, right? So I looked up, now we're starting to get real good at this. We looked up abnormal. Abnormal means not in the majority. So apparently allergy means I get a reaction from alcohol that most people don't get. And that fits in because they say one out of 10 gets a different effect than nine out of 10/1 and attends alcoholic 90% of the world's not. I don't know if that's accurate, but

probably close. Most people in the world are not alcoholic.

When you're in a yeah, especially when you're new, it looks like 90% are. And but if you get, if you ever get back into the real world and get a real job and all that, you'll find that most people aren't like us. They may drink and they may drink heavily at times and make a fault themselves or get a DUI or whatever,

but you'll, you'll, you'll come to agree that those numbers are probably correct. But that's meaningless information unless you know the two different effects. And this is a part that I never heard anybody talk about and it helped me immensely. And

one out of 10 gets a different effect from 9 out of 10. So what's the 9 out of 10 get? The non Alcoholics? Well, they get a slightly tipsy out of control. They don't like it, right? Alcohol is a poison. They drink. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with alcohol. It's not your problem. As the book says, it's selfishness

just a symptom.

It's conviviality and loosens you up. And it's read a party, you know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with alcohol. Stop being mad at alcohol. Right? But when I drink it, 9 out of 10 people slightly tipsy, out of control don't like the way it makes them feel,

you know what I mean? Enter a couple drinks. Oh, no, thank you. You know what I mean. You want another one? No, no, no, no. Gotta go to work. Work tomorrow, right? So, like, I drive. Driving, right? They don't like it. One out of 10 gets a slightly in control. Instead of a depressant, it's a stimulant. I mean, let's go do something, right? Like Chris said before, let's go to the city. You know what I mean? True Work. I quit. Let's get ashore. I'll get another job. I don't, you know, later on. You know what I mean? The keys. I'll drive. I'll show you how to drive,

you know what I mean? And it does something to me, and I didn't know this when I was a kid starting to drink. I didn't know any of this, but it does something to me. Man, I ain't shy anymore. I ain't afraid to talk in front of people. I ain't afraid to ask a girl to dance. Like he said, even if it's square dancing, I don't care. I don't even know what it is. I'll do it, right? I could hang out with people. I could be on that corner 57th and grades in a playground and man, I could be a part of life. I have to be some shy kids sitting there in the corner in my head, right,

thinking about what everybody's thinking about me and all that. And it just transformed me into something that I had found. My Auntie Bill Wilson called it the elixir of magic elixir. You know what I mean? It just, you know what I mean. Chuck Chamberlain. I think it says it transforms your perception of reality. It doesn't really change anything, but it looks different.

They really didn't change at all. If you ever read Bills first experience with a drink and in the mansion before he went to war, what it did for him, he was a shy, gawky, tall kid. All of a sudden he has a couple drinks and he's holding court man, people are listening to him. Of course, the problem with that effect is you tend to over serve yourself a little too much, drink too much, get a little sloppy. Some bad things can happen and that usually backfires. That's right. So that's really.

So we're saying, you got to believe this. He's telling people like us, you have to believe this. You know what I mean? And I was in a for a year and never heard anybody talk about that. The I mean, I heard the word allergy and I heard cute sayings once. Too many fouls is not enough. But that doesn't that I didn't feel that when somebody gave it to me this way, I was like, oh, man, Yeah. Well, if you put it that way, well, we're putting it that way. And somebody told me, you know, you put it that way. I certainly fall into that category of the one out of 10.

You know, I'm dead right away. I go from a year in A and I'm not sure what an alcoholic is in 2 minutes. Well, if that's the definition that I'm definitely an alcoholic, well, that's good and bad news. The good news is you finally figured out your problem in life, right? It says in there it explains a lot of things for which we could otherwise not account,

it explains how a slick guy like me started to get locked up, robbing stores, completely lost his life, etc. And I didn't question any of that stuff anymore. I just started to think maybe I had this allergy the whole time and it got progressively worse and I drank myself into it and here I am at 33 years old

and it made some sense. So that's the physical part of allergy. What effect do you get from alcohol? I can't answer that for you. Do you get a slightly tipsy or do you get a right? It's somebody used to say you either get a whoa or a whoa. I don't know which row you get, you know what I mean? I know which woe I get and I'm ready to go. You know what I mean?

And so that's the physical part of it, he goes on to say. That's good information

that will be good. And explaining alcoholism, the people, maybe it'll help get a new person a little scared because they'll think they'll have this thing. But there's really not a whole lot you can do about the physical part. You're going to have it. You're going to be a carrier till the day you die, but you don't recover from that. There's not a pill or anything you can take and your body doesn't grow out of that.

You'll be a carrier of the physical component forever. Now I said some more good and bad news is there's a whole mental side to it, which is really the crux of the problem, because

the physical part can't hurt you if you don't drink, right? If alcoholism was only a physical disease, the solution would be simple. Just don't drink. Sound familiar, right? That's like AA101. But if you hear somebody say that from now on, it's a red flag

that they're not attuned to the big book, to the literature. It's Alma. If you study the book and go to literature meetings for long enough, it's like getting an ear for music. You know what I mean? You hear things and they don't sound the same anymore. I hear somebody say, just don't drink, man. Before I be like, let's go over there. He's got 40 years, man. But I hear that today. And I go, jeez. And there's a lot of things like that. Think, think, think. Plated tapes, right? All that sounds good at one point, but when you really understand alcoholism,

you understand that they're dying and that they really have never been taught this stuff. So he goes on to talk about people like us. We drink because we get an effect from alcohol. No, no big surprise there, right? Everybody gets an effect from alcohol, right? The problem is I get an exaggerated effect, but never see. I never knew it. I thought everybody got that effect. And that's why I was a little surprised when you weren't taken off Monday with me.

Or are you like waking up Thursday with me? Or what do you, what do you have to like? How could you go to work?

Work. It's for work. Are you getting another job? Doesn't matter. I could never buy it from a from you.

From sophomore year in high school till the day they put me in rehab. I never had a sober day in my life. I never thought of it that way,

but looking back on it, further review, Right? I never was sober One. Why? Why would you want to be sober? Could never fathom that thought unless you had to for some reason. Why would you want to be sober on purpose? And then when I look at that now, yeah, I was like, holy shit, that's dysfunctional. You know, I don't think most people could

say that, but people in here, you say that and I go, let me do. They said it ain't no big revelation to people in here. But the people out there, they look at you and go, okay, you know, tread lightly around you. But Silkworth goes on to say that there's a mental side of it, and that when people like us get wrestling now, we're sober, right?

We get restless, irritable, discontent or emotionally out of whack. They're their emotions. You can plug one in. If you want to put another word in there, feel free ready to insert IN motion here. When I get out of whack, my mind is going to start scanning for relief. And if I don't have it, a way to give it to relief, which I never did in life. I didn't have any spiritual means or anything like that. My mind on its own knows how to get it. It's called an alcoholic mind. It's called a metal blank spot.

Basically the gist of it is it will block out what alcohol did to me and only allow me to see what it's going to do for me. I don't care how long you're sober, it'll block it out. I know we always say here's another one. Don't believe the lie. It's not a lie. It's a delusion, right? A delusion. You you don't have any defense against a delusion.

You can't not believe a delusion, you know, I mean, I look at a magician. It looks real. You know what I mean? I vaguely sense you can't solve a woman in half on the stage there and that gets proud. But I look at it and go, wow, how they do that. That's kind of like hell. An alcoholic mind works. Apparently they can block it out and tell you it'll be okay this time. And you'll act on a subtle thought like I'll just do this, I'll just do that. I'm not going to do this. And

but if you got that going on and you combine that with this allergy, you got a recipe for disaster.

And that's what it means to be powerless over alcohol. You basically can't drink. You can't not drink, and there's nothing you can do about it. Do you understand that? You can't drink because of this effect you get it ain't normal. You can't not drink because of this mental condition and there ain't nothing you can do about it.

Now, if you got anything on the ball, your next thoughts going to be. But what do I do? Which kinds of brings us to Step 2, right?

What do I do? That's how you go into Step 2. Not like where's God or anything. It's like the only the only way you're going to be open mind to God is if you're forced into it, back into it, you're going to die. All right, what do I do? Oh, glad you asked, right. And that's how we gently right talk about came to believe of how you know what I mean. We don't lead off with God. We get you to the point where you're scared get you to squarely see your problem. Then we got a shot with you.

But this whole mental side, I mean, I didn't know about that, that if you understand that, especially page 24, it talks about it's not a matter of choice, right? How crazy is that? So what you're saying it's not up to me whether I drink or not Exactly. It's not a matter of willpower because willpower only works if it see something wrong with what you're about to do. And if your mind can block it out, willpower is not going to save you. Doesn't even see anything wrong with it, right? And it's not a matter of memory recall.

I know you were taught to remember your last load and keep it green or keep it real or whatever the Hell's you want to keep it, but it doesn't work like that, right? At certain times it says you can't remember last week, right? It's called the dynamic memory if you want a name for it. And you can't recreate emotional pain to the same extent as one originally happened. You know why? Because it ain't happening anymore. I can't get scared of something that happened 10 years ago. I remember it maybe vividly, but it don't

scare me. I don't know, you know what I mean? When you knew you got more of a chance and maybe staying sober a little bit on that fear or whatever, but you stay sober six months a year, multiples. That's like another person. You know what I mean? You tell me. I can remember the things, but they won't come into my mind to keep me sober if I get blocked off,

if I get emotionally out of whack, you know what I mean? So he's telling us there. Matter of fact, he uses the words. There's no effective mental defense. Now keep in mind, he says at certain times. Now here's the dangerous part of that. Maybe there's certain times where you can get to a meeting, right? What do we tell somebody if they feel like drinking? Get to a meet and share about it.

OK, for argument's sake, let's say you can do that. Let's say you do it three times successfully.

4th time, metal blank spot, drink dead. Where the other three worth it. You see how much of A smokescreen that can be, how dangerous that can be? To imply that if I feel like drinking, it's just a matter of me exerting my thinking, my willpower, and coming here and telling on myself. Or something like that, as we like to say,

the books telling you that that's going to eventually fail you, it's going to kill you if you don't have another answer. A spiritual answer, right, talks about and we agnostics, it's a spiritual solution, physical illness with a spiritual solution. And that's kind of the problem as I see it with alcoholism is it don't look right.