The Austin Citywide meeting in Atstub, TX

Yes, it's awesome. I was talking to somebody the other day and realized that three weeks from yesterday I'll have 14 years and nobody is more surprised about that than me.

You know, my, my sobriety date is October 5th of 1998 and I'm truly grateful for what I found here.

I when I first got sober and they kept telling me they're on a pink cloud. You're on a pink cloud. It's going to go away. It's a pink cloud just going to go away. And then, and after a while, I just went to a different Home group because I got tired of hearing that crap. I'll stop now and say they told me I should really try to watch my language. But for me, what that generally means is watching it fall out of my mouth and get all over people. So I'll do the best I can.

You know, I get it worked up. Stuff comes out.

But yeah, it's, it's for the most part, I've been on a pink cloud for nearly 14 years now. It's my opinion that that all that is is the newfound presence of God. And as long as I keep finding new God, it doesn't have to go away at all.

A lot of times people who do this, you know, the meeting starts at 7 and at 750, they're getting sober. I don't want to do that, you know,

or they talk a lot about the events in their life, but not how they practice the principles of a A on the events in their life. And that's what I want to know. You've been through a lot of stuff. That's awesome. Tell me how you work the steps on it because I got a feeling I'm going to go through that stuff.

You know, it's not helpful just to know I can. I'd like to know how this is the way my head works. I'm a gearhead. I'm a by nature. I sort of analyze things to try and understand how they work. I'm not comfortable. I'm that guy who moves into a new house and learns what all the light switches do right away, You know, that's just how I am. It's not good or bad, it's just how I am.

But

so my, my take on this is very mechanical. You know, if I can't reproduce the results, then I'm not doing it right

or I've misunderstood something. And the beauty of the program is it does not matter if you believe it works or not. If you does, if you do what it says to do, you get what it says you get having had a spiritual awakening as the result. You know, it's like opening a recipe book to the chocolate cake recipe and going that doesn't make cake,

but if you do what it says, you get cake

and the first Cape will be crappy, but it's cake, you know, and, and the more I make the cake, the better I get it making the cake and the, I begin to understand the nature of the why I'm doing what I'm doing. And pretty soon there's cake everywhere and it's awesome, you know, and, and that's what the program is like. It doesn't even matter if I believe it, as long as I just do what it says unreservedly. And and that's awesome, because that's exactly what I had to do.

I preface my story by saying

regardless of anything I say, you need to know that I'm basically a nice boy from a good family. In my heart, that's really who I am. The people I run into now in my life who I haven't seen since 1980, I'm exactly who they expected me to be. They didn't. They weren't there for the detour.

I'm a little bit different than a lot of people in the program in that I grew up in a house with no other Alcoholics and addicts. You know, there is a history of some depression in my family. I found out not long ago that one of my mother's sisters died 20 years sober, but I never knew that. But there wasn't any drinking in my house. There wasn't any. It was a, you know, you know, those Thanksgivings, you're all upset. You never got to have that. We were having it. That's my house. And I was a very happy little kid until the first day of first grade

and I went to school and were those kids I didn't know and they made me uncomfortable and and so I started to eat because my story isn't just a story. I said I'm an addict and alcoholic. What that means is I'm a chronic binge drinker in a low bottom heroin addict. But my story is not just a story of alcohol or drugs. It's a story of malady, a really progressive malady. And, and looking back now,

that's the first, that's where I can see its roots. Six years old, uncomfortable around people.

You know, that's funny. You know, you can talk about leaving your kid in the car while you're running in the bar in an AA meeting or going to prison, but he bring up food. People get real tense. But

I was told that I started putting on weight in first grade because I'm such an active boy and they're making you sit all day. And that's an awesome story. It's totally not true. You know, there was I was uncomfortable and there was food and I started to eat. And I was with the same 25 kids for six years and I never really developed friendships with them, which is also a symptom of the malady, this disconnect. I had a lot of proximity buddies, like if I saw you all the time, we were friends. And if I stopped seeing you by accident, I stopped seeing you all together. It didn't occur to me to call you

so I'm with all the same kids in in grade school at night.

Never really develop any lasting friendships with them. I moved between 6th and 7th grade, so I went to a different middle school than my friends and I never spoke to any of them again.

And then middle school comes along and, you know, I have kids in middle school right now. Middle school is a holding bin for hormonal lunatics. But but everyone in middle school feels different. But, but I was different. You know, at 7 years old, I saw, I believe it was The Rolling Stones and Ed Sullivan and knew for a fact that that's what I wanted to do with my life. I want to be a musician,

and by middle school I'm walking around with a tape deck. It's 1973, got a big Panasonic tape deck with an earphone in one ear listening to Black Sabbath and hair down to here at a point in time when the rest of the kids haven't even discovered the radio. You know,

I felt different, but I was different, you know, but it, but it was the feeling different that mattered. And I started going to concerts when I was 13 years old. My parents just dropped me off outside and I'd go because kids my age weren't interested. And, and so I'm going to concerts and there's a lot of marijuana smoking at the concerts. And for the first two or three, it's like, man, that's weird. I don't know. But nobody seems to be freaking out. So I'll, I'll give that a shot, you know, and I met a guy

not long after that who lived not far from me, whose next door neighbor sold pot.

So that was convenient. And, and for the next couple of years, I was smoking pot because it went so good with the food and, and,

and, you know, and struggling to find my place in middle school,

high school rose along. I'm, you know, at 15 years old, I was 6 feet tall. I weighed 200 lbs. I had hair down to here in a beard. The drinking age is 18,

and I grew up right by the university campus,

you know, so, but

the broad picture of my story is I drank and I used for a long time and it was really fun. And then I drank and I used for a number of years and it was still fun, but there were starting to be some consequences. And then I drank and I used for a number of years and it was kind of fun, but there was more consequences. And I dragged and I used for a few years and it was never any fun. And there was tons of consequences. And I wish I was dead every day. And then I got sober.

Thank you. Goodnight.

But

you know,

I mean, my stories, everybody's story, you know, it's crap. It's good, it's worse. It's kind of crappy. It's totally crappy.

Here we go, but but in high school, life is still good. I was having a great time.

I'm not one of those people who the first time it crossed my lips, I drank for three weeks and threw up on a cop. You know,

it took me to college to get to that place.

Find some guys in middle in high school and we start skateboarding in the mid 70s. I find this little, they're older than me and we're having a great time. I find my people, you know, and, and then I get out of, get out of high school and start my first band. Like within a month or two, I'm, my hair is cut off, it's this long, it's blonde and I'm in a punk band. It's 1979 and, and I'm playing and I'm playing a lot at this club down by the drag and having a really good time. And I found my people, you know, there's the Reagan administration. Punk rock was perfect for me, you know,

and, and everybody there drinks a lot and everybody there smokes a lot of pot and there's people over there that are doing some speed and they make me nervous.

But, but I'm, I'm playing music and it's really fun, you know, I start getting a lot, the band starts becoming successful. We start traveling, making records. You know, I, I begin to get that first blush. And if I can just get enough of them to tell me I'm cool all at once, maybe I am. And and and things keep progressing and so does my drinking

and so does my my use, but it's still manageable and fun. The band I was in, that wasn't a central piece of what we did.

That man fell apart in 8384. The next band, our motto was show up drunk, show up late, don't show up at all. And, and we once ran up a $300.00 bar tab on $0.50 beer.

I'm not even kidding, you know, and,

and you know, life was on, you know, and by this point I hit this place

in around 84 where I started drinking so much that I would pass out. You ever pass out? I don't know if it happened to you happen to me pass out. So, and bless my friends heart, they they cared about me, but nobody was dragging my 200 LB dead weight back to the car. So they'd roll me on my stomach so I didn't choke and then just leave me where I felt and,

and I'd wake up in alleys or front yards at fraternity houses or, you know, and, and my solution to this problem was not to go. I should probably be careful about my drinking. It was to buddy up with those guys over there who are doing speed. And that was one of those first I should have known moments, but I didn't know

you could drink so much more. And

and so, you know, that got to go in, you know, and I moved to Los Angeles in 80, in 85 or 86, you know, it's fuzzy

and put together a rock band in the late 80s, you know, where they paid me in booze and dope. And a month after I got there, I met a beautiful little goth girl who was dealing the best crystal meth I'd ever seen two blocks from my house. And it was love at first seven day Bender, you know, and,

and I mean, I moved to Los Angeles at a time when all the boys are dressing like girls and trying to sound like poison and I look like me. You know, those outfits don't come into 38. I mean, it's really good. But but I managed to get a record deal and I managed it, you know, becoming successful and things are going well. And I'm getting ready to leave on my first big tour. The videos all over MTV, the records out in the singles in the charts. And I'm still dealing crystal meth

and the DEA comes through the front door of the cook I'm buying from his house

and his girlfriend calls me while they're there. Wrong number. But so I sat down with my girlfriend and said we have to stop this. I've worked too hard. There's I'm right at the edge of this thing I've always wanted. We have to stop this. And I think we thought we were going to stop doing drugs. I think that's what we thought we were talking about.

I climbed in a tour bus and she stayed home. I started drinking 1/5 of vodka and the better part of a case of beer every night and doing whatever cocaine I could talk to crew out of because they had more money than me at the time. And and and within a week she was doing heroin because we were well past just stopping. But we had no idea that that's where we were.

And for the next couple of years,

what my life looked like was I would go on the road and I would drink tons of alcohol. The band I was in, they give us 4K5 cases of beer and 2/5 of liquor. And at the end of the night, there was none left and we were looking for more. You know, we all drank and used exactly like each other. This is probably why we were in the band together. But so I would go on the road and I would do this and then I eventually got to where I would come home and I'm paying for this heroin. So I'm going to do it, you know, and

I've been awake for most of the 80s. I could use a nap,

So,

and I spent a couple of years. The nature of my job was like, I got to work every day for the next 3 1/2 months. But my job is like 45 minutes a night. And if I'm too drunk to do it, that's funny. And then I come off the road and I don't have to be anywhere for four months. And I'd get completely strung out. I'd stop drinking, stop doing everything else and just do heroin.

And as long as I was making money for people, nobody said anything. But that was getting more and more miserable. And there came a point in that when I realized that every good thing in my life was going to go away if I didn't stop this. But I couldn't stop.

I was on the same label as Nirvana and when Never Mind came out, that was the end of Rock'n'roll. And so we we closed the band up and I got a job working for a fashion accessories guy who who could

making enough money to stay strung out. And that scared me to death. So I sold half of everything I owned and bought a van for the other half and moved back to Texas because there's no dope in Texas

and, and and managed to stay sober for well, the drive home took five days because we weren't sober when we left LA. 28 hour drive took a long time to get here, but but when we got here

and discovered we couldn't stay sober after about 3 weeks, it was like we got to have to brush off our Spanish and head to the east side because this is undoable. And when moving didn't work, all bets were off. You know, in LA I've been like the most together junkie anybody knew us, the leper with the most fingers, you know, but, but, but all bets were off. You know, I got a job working at A at a dangerous nightclub and

that's carrying a gun everywhere I went. And I was just out of my mind. I didn't care if I lived or died.

That's not entirely true. Every day I spent terrified of dying and wishing I were dead, which is a really bad spot to find yourself and that drug on and on for a couple of years. And he was saying, hey, you know, for me to drink is to die. But I was dead four times. You know, I didn't get sober because I was afraid I was dying. I was. I got sober because I was terrified of 30 years of not dying. And I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. It was it was miserable. It wasn't killing me. I couldn't seem to stay dead. Who knew? My roommate knew CPR,

You know,

I had to do a stress test for insurance thing a while back and they're looking at the print out going. When did you have your heart attack, Mr. Gasoline? I never had a heart attack. Oh, does that Pulp Fiction thing count? Yes, Sir,

I did that twice at 98. Should I worry about that? But

so the point at which this really changed for me with because I went

and I went to a handful of meetings the last two years, I spent the last two years I was using every single day trying to figure out a way to stop. And I went to a handful of meetings, the same meeting every time. And they go just don't use no matter what, you know, off to dinner together. And not one of them said, do you know what resources are available to you for detox here in this town? You know, the hand of a A nearly killed me, you know, and

but what happened?

I'm my roommate at a 21 year old roommate who got arrested and was sure he was going to prison. So he killed himself in my house and I have found him. And I had to talk to his family and I didn't know what to do. And my neighbor came over and said, what are you going to do with his room? And I said, I don't know. I said you want me to teach you to grow pot and yes, I do.

So I start making a ton of money and I never have to leave the house. So that's what I do. I never leave the house

and

I'm sitting in my house. My dealer has delivered me a large quantity of drugs and my father collects guns and his hands are getting bad and I'm working on a pistol for him. And I'm sitting at my desk and I find myself with a syringe in one hand and a gun in the other one calmly trying to decide which one to use. And it wasn't that addict alcoholic. Oh, I want somebody save me. Don't they see it was just today or forever? And for just an instant, I was standing across the room looking at my own back on How in the hell did those become my only

choices? I had a life. I had possibilities. I was on MTV

and now that's that. This is really this is it. They're hash

to be something else and I don't know what it is.

And then later that day, and I don't know how much later cuz I didn't use the gun. I'm channel surfing and I come across the News magazine 2020 and they're doing a feature about a guy named Buddy Arnold who was a jazz drummer forever, played with all the greats in the 50s and the 60s and was a drug addict the whole time. And now, Buddy's 10 years sober, he's put the arm on the people who fund the Grammys, and they've started a foundation

whose sole purpose it is to pay for musicians to get treatment. And I'm going, Oh my God,

I've been praying. If I could just get a week

to get through the detox, maybe I could figure this 12 step business out, you know, just a week, which is funny because I argued a lot about God. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I was praying for a week and here's this gift. And so I ran into my bedroom and I got on my computer and 14 four dial up modem.

3 1/2 minutes later their page comes up. It's got one picture and I managed to get their phone number. And I would love to say that I just called him and we went straight to treatment. But like I had gone back to school,

which was an interesting ploy, the condition I was in and I was, I talked to him, I was going, I have 26 days before the next semester starts. Can we go in? Can I leave a couple of days early? No. So, so I went well, OK, then I won't go. And I started school and that lasted a few minutes and I would call them back and,

and I was given a couple of gifts. The first was they sent me to a treatment center out in the Hill Country. And when I called them, they found out I was always also on methadone. And they told me we can't take you on that methadone. You'll miss everything we have to offer you. You'll be so sick while you're here. So just stop taking that and we'll see you in six weeks. And what they were saying without saying is it was I had to go back to full-time heroin use. And that was a gift because I hadn't worked without a net in a couple of years. And I got to see just how ugly

my life really was. The 2nd gift was my on again, off again X. You know who was just as strung out as me? Sat me down and said, you got to think about why you're going to go, why you're going to do this. Because if you go for the wrong reason and it doesn't work, you'll die for good this time. I'm certain of it. So I was able to sit during that miserable six weeks between when I absolutely was ready to go and when it was time to go and think about why I'm going.

And I came to the realization that I wasn't going because I was living in a house that had a fire. And we didn't tell the landlord because we couldn't afford to move.

And I wasn't going because I had a ton of warrants and I wasn't going because the electricity keeps getting shut off. I was going because I could not figure a way to live without these substances in my life. And I was, there has to be a way, but I don't know what it is. And that's why I'm going. And that was a gift being being having that before I even got there. The next gift was not knowing that a A was going to be part of treatment, which was great because it didn't give me a chance to work up a good argument. But.

So I get to treatment,

and you know I'm detoxing the first. The first thing I remember about treatment is staggering up the hill from the detox ward into what was apparently my first meeting, and somebody starts talking about God. My head clears up for just a second. Oh crap. And then fuzz right back out again. That's all I remembered.

A lot of people say that they did the first step while they were still out there, and maybe that's true. I did a lot of research on the first step. I had all the all the elements, but I couldn't put them in an order that added up to anything.

I thought that if I could just get my body straightened out, get the drugs and alcohol out of my system, then my thinking would straighten out. Then the hole in my chest would close up and we'd all be OK. But what happened was I get the drugs out of my system, my head would go insane and and then I'd use again and, and it wasn't until I got to treatment and somebody sat me down and explained that I have to work on the spiritual first.

You know, they talked to me about the physical allergy. They talked to me about the fact that my body processes this stuff differently than other people.

You know, They talked to me. They made the connection between the powerlessness in the first half of the first step and my physical allergy. Nothing I can do is ever going to change that physical allergy.

And they sat me down and helped me understand the second-half of the first step, which is not, you know, I keep going to jail because I have warrants, because my car is everything is expired and you know, I'm broke all the time. But that's not unmanageability, that's delusion. You, you can't live the way I'm living and not have those consequences. The real unmanageability in my life comes from trying to manage what's wrong with me through my own force of will.

You know, my unmanageability doesn't really get going until I stop drinking and using. Then it gets real hard to stay inside my skin.

And then

my first pastor, the second and third step was two weeks about arguing about the arguing about the nature of God with other people in a mental facility. Basically,

you know, the book says God either is or he isn't. I figured we better decide, you know,

religions might want to know. But

but what I also found out during that two weeks of arguments, there were 70 people in that treatment center with me. 64 of them were not there for their first treatment experience and something approaching 60 of them were back after two months or six months or 18 months because they never did a four step.

And I don't know what this four step is, but I'm certain nobody's paying for me to come back.

SO23 whatever, screw it, let's do 4, you know? And apparently that's perfect because I'm still sober. I'm the only one I think out of that 70, but

my understanding of those steps has a little more nuance now, you know, but, but apparently screw it was fine. I mean, the second step for me, you know,

there's a lot of talk about waiting to be restored to sanity in the rooms and I think sounds like horse hockey.

So where how can I be restored to something I never had? Yeah, but you know, we're not talking about every crazy thought Chris ever had. We got the 4th step for that.

You know the book over and over again

talks about the insanity of the first drink. Page eight in the big book. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital, a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of the first drink. Page 66. The maintenance growth of a spiritual condition. This business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it's fatal, for when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns. Page 40. Page 57. Insanity, insanity, insanity over and over again.

So my understanding of the second step now is I'm coming to believe, and it doesn't say came to believe in a power greater than ourselves. That was I got hung on that for a while. Coming to believe in the power Gray that myself is Step 1 1/2. You know, that's a

But it's kind of believed that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, could remove

the mental obsession, because if I have a physical allergy and I just don't put it in me, who cares? I'm allergic to wheat. But the brownies aren't going, Chris. We'll make it better.

You know, it just doesn't happen. Well, once in a while, but,

but, uh,

but what is this mental obsession? I have to believe, or at least be willing to believe, that a power greater than me can remove that mental obsession.

The beauty of the program is it's not even built on a belief in God. It's built on first hand experience with the effects of this power in my life.

I get that experience by taking the steps. And

so for me, for most of the for most anybody sitting in this room, because Lord help you if you're sitting this room and you've got the obsession to drink, Hey, listen to me must be torture. But but from by the time I'm sitting talking to my sponsor, what this is really about is credit where credits due because the obsession is not on me. So am I willing to give credit to a power greater than myself for the removal of this thing that never went away

and now it's gone? Because if I am, that's a handy bit of first hand experience to start with,

you know, and it removes all this waiting to be restored nonsense. You know, if I'm still waiting to be restored, I got inventory to do.

And then the third step for me, you know, turn it over, take it back, turn it over, take it back. What does that mean? What's my job? I just want to know my job. And so,

you know, and how am I supposed to know God's will? It's like the book says, I have to, you know, I must carry a vision of God's will into all my affairs. So for me these days, the third step has become a decision to act like a man of faith

instead of a man who's afraid. You know, the book says when I straighten out spiritually, the mental and physical will follow. So if I put, if I turn my will and my life over to God,

into the care of God, then then I'm more likely to make good decisions. My thinking is more likely to be centered in reality at least. And, and I may not know what God's will looks like, but I'm I got ways to figure out what my fear looks like.

So I launch into my 4th step. I'm in a hurry because I'm terrified I'm going to go back to rehab. And my first fourth step is an interesting work of fiction.

I got, I nailed the first two columns, but

but the rest of it was because I wasn't asking for guidance or help. And every time I did, somebody would show me some 80 page Hazelton book and it wasn't helpful.

I can't remember, you know, this is confusing. I need to understand, you know, and, and, and it wasn't until a couple of years later that I finally learned how to do a four step. But my sponsor knew what was supposed to be happening and he was able to sit down with me and lead me

to my part in all of these resentments and help me understand that I had a part in all this stuff.

And, you know, I did six and seven, the way it says an hour. I tried not to fall asleep, you know, and, and sent about making my amends, which weren't too bad because I tried to keep everybody away from me. Turns out a lot of the amends were stop keeping us away, you know, but come prove to us. It's not scary to have you in the room. And and I get on about my business now. Like I said, I had a lot of problems with the word God and organized religion. I was just, oh, it made me insane.

And I struggled with it a lot, you know, and what I came to and you know, in my infinite spiritual wisdom is, you know, if you need to dress it up like Jesus, that's fine. But I'm more evolved than that. And, you know, and at the end of every meeting, I'm, I don't say the Lords prayer. And I look around, see who's cool, like me not saying the prayer. That's what I do in my kick ass program. And

you know, and about 120 days sober, I'm sitting with my sponsor. Most of my men's are done and I'm telling them, you know, I think the promises are coming true. I think I'm finding what the program has to offer. And he looked at me and no, you're not.

And the and the kindest, most loving way possibly said you are better than you've been in 25 years. And you're still so far from good. It's terrifying on a good day.

And somehow, rather than getting upset, I was able to go. You mean it gets better than this? And he's going, oh, dude, seriously. And so I kept going, you know, and the first six months of my sobriety was like the 1st 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, you know, sound keeps going off and stuff going by my head. I couldn't even make whole sentences. You know,

around six months I learned to make whole sentences and began to date because that's all it took at my Home group. And,

you know, everybody says don't get in a relationship in the first year of sobriety, but nobody knows if that works because nobody does it, you know? And somebody after this will come up to me and I stayed. So really lighten up. It's a joke, you know,

but

some, so I'm getting on with this stuff, you know, and I'm, I'm trying to, trying to live my life and I'm working a 12 step program, if you count the 13th step, because I'm really only collecting power from my use. And, and I'm and at about 18 months sober, I go to a reunion at the treatment center I went to and there's an amazing speaker out on the lawn on this beautiful day in the Hill Country. And after it's over

800 of us sitting in a circle holding hands, saying the Lord's Prayer. And I'm doing what I do. I'm looking around that circle, seeing who's cool, like me, not saying the prayer. And halfway through,

this thought came into my head that if even half of these people or even half as desperate and messed up as I was, this is a miracle.

And it was the first time that word had any real substance, you know, the miracle. But this had weight. I could see this. And it was like I'd spent 18 months having small spiritual experiences, you know, trusting God, taking action, striking match. Oh look God and trust God, take action, oh look, God. But sitting on the lawn that day, the cumulative effect of all of those small spiritual experiences was the Bush caught fire and I woke up.

Because an educational variety spiritual experience is not thinking my way into an understanding of God. It's having enough spiritual experiences to educate me and wake me up to the fact that the world does not work how I thought, you know? And I have to keep having those spiritual experiences even today.

So I come back to Austin and I realize that I need to get into sponsorship. So I go to meetings and I try to become attractive.

Because it's a program of attraction rather than promotion, right? No, it's not.

The 11th tradition doesn't have anything to do with the 12th step. It's a great way to avoid service work and setting up chairs is nice, and cleaning ashtrays is nice, but it's not one-on-one service carrying this message, you know, and I know you're not good at it yet. You know how you get good at something? You do it a lot. You'll be willing to suck first, you know, show up and suck. It's my motto, you know,

but so I started, you know, I saw a guy come walking into my Home group. His insurance paid for five days of detox, a red headed see through Irish guy, 35 years old, still shaking. And I just walked up and went, hi, I'm your sponsor. When he got a year he went. I just thought that's how it worked. I didn't know, but

but what I discovered is a number of things like First off, my spiritual growth is dependent on me working with others. And once I learned that others started getting worked with plus. And apparently everybody knows this but me or probably maybe us. But it's real easy to have a partial understanding of something if you're learning it for your own use. But if you teach it, you have to understand it. And I've got to I haven't. You know, like I said before, I believe the program is based on first hand experience of the effects of

trusting this power and taking action and gaining the experience. But if I don't ever examine that experience, I'm not sure what it was.

But every time I talk about my experience, my current experience with what I'm doing in the program, it solidifies behind me and becomes a solid foundation to stand on. It's not this notion that I think the steps work. It's this concrete proof at how. Because the beauty of the program for me is that the results are reproducible. And not just reproducible, they're refinable. I can get better at this stuff because if I want to, you know, screw sober, I want a big cool life

sober. Just the first thing I've got to do.

Apparently it takes this much willingness and connection to God to stop using and this much to stop lying to people and this much to show up on time for work. And you know, we treat that first one like it's the big one. It's not the tiniest bit of willingness in the obsessions lifted. You know, it's the rest of the work that where the big cool life happens.

So I keep moving through this stuff and I become fascinated.

Spiritual stuff. You know, I'm the kind of guy growing up where if I heard a song I liked, you were going to hear it whether you wanted to or not.

And this is just like the Best Song Ever.

So I'm running through the steps and I'm, I'm trying to get a better understanding of this stuff. And it continues to change. Like I said, I've been sober, you know, 13 plus years

in. In the beginning, I walked in with almost nothing. There was very little left materially, physically, spiritually. It's just not much left.

I stumbled into a job that paid me a lot of money to work a few hours for the first three years I was sober and and it and it allowed me to only have to think about this. It was a gift.

And then I showed up for work one day and the company was out of business and nobody told me and the job skills were not transferable. And the only other things I knew how to do to make money, I was no longer comfortable doing so, you know, and but because I was had a Home group

and I was, I got so freaked out about money and so I couldn't pay my bills. I wanted to be responsible. That was new, but the, but the desire to be responsible was crushing me. But I didn't go to my Home group for a few days. And one of the guys came over and said, what's going on with you? And we talked and he gave me a meditation practice to do right that minute. And an hour later when I was done,

when we started, this is me. And here's the fear. And when I finished, here's the fear. And here's me. Same fear, but I can make some choices now

and

and they fellowship kept me sober that day. One guy kept me sober that day and I lost my apartment. I sold my car. I started renting rooms. Seemed like a disaster. People are going God's making room for something big. I said I was in there. You know, next time you're tearing the house down, let me get my stuff first.

But it

but it was a gift because I was able to start a business because my expenses were low. I could afford to work for myself for a little while until I got some clients. And for the next nine years I was self-employed. I had to put everything I owned in storage, which turned out to be awesome, because about three years later I got married and we didn't have to wonder where my stuff was going to go.

It was going to go wherever it had already gone. You know,

I got to the only thing my father wanted from me was my presence. And that wasn't always easy. Not because he was a bad guy, he wasn't. He was awesome, but he was old and he was sick and it was hard to watch. And I was still selfish and full of fear. But I went out there as much as I could and, and at the end of his life, I got to be there for him. I have to walk him through it. I got to help him do inventory so he could die without resentments against me and some of my siblings.

That was awesome.

You know, it's a tell people that the last couple of years I was using every day was worse than the day before. That's because every day was one more bit of bitter and demoralizing incomprehensible misery. I couldn't find my way out of the hole I was in. It means every day was the worst day of my life, you know? And now every day is a little better than the day before, if only because I got a little bit more experience at this works

day. My dad died was the best day of my life. The next day was even better,

you know, day I got married was the best day of my life. The next day, even better. You know, and the beauty of all this is I am not special. You know, they say some are sicker than others. And I used to think that meant that the people who kept relapsing were sicker than me, you know? But what I understand now is that I'm one of the sick ones. You know, I get wildly uncomfortable very quickly. And what that means is I apparently have to do this a little more rigorously than most people I'm around.