The topic of "Spiritual Smiritual" at the Sea Isle Big Book workshop in Sea Isle, NJ

Good morning, everybody. My name is Chris. I am an alcoholic. I do not believe Dave did it.

Coming up with topics and what you know, one of them was spirituality as a character defect. You know, having a lot of fun this morning. And I had no idea that he would actually put that into the preamble. Anyway, it's really good to be here today. I want to thank Robbie and and Dave for putting this on. It's always fun to do these things.

So it's fun to gather together in fellowship, you know, in each time, remind each other how important spiritual growth is, how important, you know, it is for us to stick together and continue to encourage each other as we move forward on the the path toward toward recovery.

You know, one of the things about alcoholism is it's a very, very unorthodox illness. The book Alcoholics Anonymous talks about alcoholism as being an illness. In the mid 50s, the American Medical Society Association came, came to the conclusion that alcoholism is a disease. You know, I'm not going to get involved in that argument, but I can certainly understand that it is definitely an illness and, and it's an unorthodox illness in the way that

it presents. And it's misunderstood by people who have it. It's misunderstood by 90% of the people out there that will treat you for it. It's certainly misunderstood by most of the people who come in contact with us. It is seen as it is seen as a kind of a self

perpetuating disorder that we're playing a willing part in. And I don't know about anybody else, but the last two or three years of my drinking, I was absolutely desperate to separate from alcohol. You know, I, I'm, I wasn't stupid. I saw that. I saw that my drinking was going to kill me probably pretty soon. And it was also tarnishing every piece of quality that my life had. My personal relationships were in the toilet. My, you know, my ability to show up when I needed to show up,

who is impacted. I was, you know, I was an absolute mess. And, you know, I knew that there was something really wrong with me being as big of a mess as I was. But I was caught up in this, you know, and alcoholism is incredibly aggressive as an illness. It is if you suffer from alcoholism, if you're an alcoholic in here today, there's one thing I absolutely know, and that is you're minimizing because, you know, I'm minimizing. We all minimize as far as just how aggressive alcohol

is and just how much attention we need to pay to it because it is the rapacious creditor that it talks about in our book. I have. So I've seen so many people's lives just wiped out by Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been in home groups where we buried at least a person a year,

you know, and these are, these were young people who had a lot going for them. You know, a lot of times, you know, a lot of times we're, you know, we're intelligent people. We, you know, we have, we have a lot of a lot of potential. Anybody ever tell you you had a lot of potential? They were telling me that until they finally realized they were probably wrong.

But but anyway, alcoholism is just, you know, just brutal and very, very unorthodox. You know, some of the ways, some of the ways that it works is obviously, you know, the right up front in your face Issue is that if you're an alcoholic, you have little or no control over the amount you take when you start drinking. Harder to understand, though, really is the obsession of the mind. Why do we keep going back

to drinking? You know how many times if we said this time I really mean it, I'm not gonna drink again. And yet we we drink

a but really the worst part I think of of alcoholism is what it does to our spirit, what it does to the damage it does to our emotional condition and how it how it just levels us and levels our quality of life. Now I started drinking in,

you know, the, the very early set, well, actually the late 60s, I ended up taking the last drink that I've had so far in late 1989. And during that period of time, it was about a 20 year period of time. And in the beginning, I found alcohol to be incredibly wonderful as a, as a child growing up and going through school and, you know, being an adolescent and everything, I, I, I had

time dealing difficult time with lot of situations in my life.

You know, there wasn't the, the heightened sense of psychological disorder type of placements that we have today. Today you can, you can get, you know, if you can get labeled or you can get diagnosed with so many different kind of things. But as a child, I probably could have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or a personality disorder, you know, depression,

a sense of, you know, not feeling a part of being really separated from, from my world and living so much in my head. And, and, you know, this caused me a lot of and, you know, anxiety, you know, as a, as a child going through school, there were things that I was unbelievable

afraid of, you know, I mean, things that I just, you know, I was terror stricken. And it seemed like all the other kids were fine with this. You know, I'll give you just one example of it. I think, I think I'm about 10 years old or something. And has anybody in here remember square dancing in school? Like, Oh my God, they

no idea what they're doing to the pre alcoholic by putting you in a situation like that. You know what I mean? What they did in my school is they, they, they lined up all the girls on one side of the gymnasium and all the boys on the other side. They blew the whistle and you had to run across the gymnasium and ask a girl to dance.

Are you kidding me? What idiot came up with this as a form of physical exercise? Are you nuts? You know, and I'm 10 years old and I'm, you know, I'm running across about to die, you know, I'm running across and trying to find a girl to dance with. I mean, now everybody else is having a good time, you know, but me, I'm like, freaked. And I got, I got to tell you the, the solution. I came across the solution when I first took a drink of alcohol.

It was, it was a it was a day, I think I was in 8th grade or something. I decided with a couple of my friends that were going to cut school and go back to my house and get drunk. And it was like, you know, real, real cool thing to do. We could tell a lot of stories the next day at school about it. And we did. We went back to my house and I pulled out from from the closet, I pulled out a dusty bottle of Four Roses whiskey. OK. And I poured 3 big water glasses filled with that whiskey and I handed it to my two buddies and I, you know, I took one. We all started drinking and what happened with

buddies was probably what happens to normal people. They had 2/3 of their glass and man, they had had enough. You ever drink with people who have enough on you? You know? My God. What do you mean you had enough? Are you crazy? It's only 11:00. Let's go to this,

you know, are you nuts? And because that's how I drank anyway, I see, you know, they started drinking. They had 2/3 of the glass and they sat back and they watched the show because I had all of my glass. The rest of their glasses finished off the bottle and I went into my first blackout,

which is any blackout drinkers in here. Oh man, that can be disconcerting, Can it? You know, coming to in different cities with like one shoe, you know, Oh man, you know, there was some in blackouts. I would do horrific things and people would remind me, you know, you know what you did last night? It got the I don't tell me. I don't want to know what I did last night. Please, you know, please be merciful and just don't tell me

now. It's just things like I call my boss up, you know, blackout and threaten is like I'm gonna kill you and I I wouldn't remember. So I'd go walking into work the next day. He'd be like, what the hell are you gonna go here? Like what? You know,

it's just awful. Awful. But the thing that happens to me when I started drinking at 4 Roses whiskey was that terrified school kid. You know, the person who's who's just freaked about running across the gymnasium to ask a girl to dance. When I started drinking that alcohol, it took that fear away.

It took away that anxiety that it talks about it in the in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the bondage of self, the bondage of self being so locked up inside of me that I'm, I'm self-centered. Everything revolves and, and impacts me, you know,

and to live like that is just tremendously difficult. And when I found a way out, I found alcohol, which I believed allowed me to be normal, you know, and I understood that going into a blackout and then being unbelievably sick for three days was not probably a good thing. But from that moment forward, from recognizing what alcohol did for me, it, it made me feel larger than life. It made me feel like

everything is OK. Yeah, this is so cool being here with these guys. You know, I never felt I was want to be somewhere else. So, you know, I experienced this alcohol and from that moment forward, I become obsessed with it. I become obsessed with where I was going to drink, who, who I was going to drink with, how I was going to get it,

you know, because I was like, I was like 13 and the drinking age was 21, you know, So I was problematic. But you gotta work those things out, you know, and, and I started, I started to arrange my life really without even conscious awareness of this. I started to arrange my life to fit alcohol in

because alcohol needed to come in. I mean, I, you know, for the longest time people were telling me my drinking was a problem and I would not understand what they were saying. They got, they were getting it wrong. I'll give you, I'll give you, for instance, I drove through a telephone pole after I passed out, you know, drunk out of my mind and I was killed, OK? I was killed. When the, when the cops got there, there was no pulse, there was no breathing. They had to give me CPR and I went flat line again in the ambulance,

hit me with the paddles, you know, clear blue. And then they bring me back and I remember coming to in the emergency room and there's so my head shutting, I'm yelling and puking and the doctor's pissed and everything. It's just a horrible, horrible scene. My ribs are broken now.

You know, the normal person would say, man, this was a bad experience. I need to avoid this. OK. But you know what I did? As soon as I was out of the hospital, my first, my first thing that I did was go to the liquor store, get some booze and drive down to the park where we would drink.

So I was drinking and driving again with, you know, still bleeding from being killed. It wasn't like, you know, I was not saying that it's the alcohol that's the problem. The alcohol was way too part of my world for me to recognize alcohol is a problem. My problem was me. My problem was sobriety. Sobriety was untenable for me. I did not like it.

I needed something to take me away, to take it the edge off to, to Get Me Out of myself because it was not a good place to be inside me. So what happened was after becoming preoccupied,

obsessed with this alcohol, somewhere along the line, we cross the line and we cross a line into alcoholism, we cross a line into powerlessness. And once you cross that line, you are not going back,

you know, with, with, with human aid. You it, it is a much too serious issue to be able to just decide to stop drinking. That's why so many of us die, because wanting to not drink doesn't mean anything. After you've crossed that line. You can want to stay away from alcohol. Is is, is hard as you can possibly want to stay away from alcohol and you don't.

So, you know, I'm drinking, I'm drinking just

tons and tons of alcohol. Everybody's like, Oh my God, you know, I can't believe how loaded you got, you know, and drugs were around. There's a whole lot of drugs back in the the very early 70s and you know, I partook of those too. You know what I mean? I use those alcoholically. I I remember the great Quaalude epidemic of 73. OK, this buddy of mine comes in with a big if anybody, if anybody in here is an inexperienced with Quaaludes taking

it's like drinking a six pack of beer in a minute and a half. That's about what? OK, so you know, try to picture this guy brings in a giant sack of Quaaludes and his brother had given them to him the night before. It said sell these tomorrow in school. He hadn't done them either. So he's selling them for a dollar in the smoking area before school, high school.

And so we're like, well, how did you take man? And he's like 3 or 4.

So about 50

of us took three or four quailings before first period. That was a mess.

There were ambulances coming in and out. You know, I I remember I made it to about fourth period and I was walking down a hallway hanging out of the lockers like this. I think I can't get out of here, you know, so I'm seeing exit sign. You know, I was always great at exiting places. So it exits such I blow out that exit toward my head for the woods and I'm running. I just I was running and I get out to the woods and you know, I find all these people like hugging trees out there. I wasn't like the only guy that thought of this.

Now the next day in school, they they come on to me. They call Chris. Man, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. You know, everybody in the 300 wing watched you bolt to the woods. They took you, took you 5 minutes to do 100 yards. You know, it's like, I was like,

oh God, you know, and I was looking for those quaaludes to do again, you know, for, you know, oh, I just, I, I needed out of me. You know what I mean? I needed something to change my world because my world was so uncomfortable all the time. Now you do 20 years of this and what's happened is you, you, you have become alcoholic.

You become a chronic alcoholic. The big Book describes somebody like me as a hopeless alcoholic, a real alcoholic, So many, you know, not a disco drunk, you know, somebody that drinks a little bit and gets in trouble, but somebody who is totally, totally addicted and dependent

on alcohol. And it didn't matter what I wanted, I was going to have a certain amount of alcohol in my, in my system toward the end every single day or, or there was going to be hell to pay emotionally and physically for me. Now

I finally, I finally get to a point where it's, it's time to get sober. I mean, I, I just have to, I had been in an outpatient to get a, get a, my license back. I had like 3 DUI. I had to get my license back. So I went to this outpatient and I knew that, you know, if you were in real trouble, you know, you can sign yourself in upstairs on the 5th and 6th floor. So that's what I did. I called them up. I said I'm coming in and and I went in and I started. I started 28 days

in in

primary treatment for alcoholism. It was a It was a place in Morristown, NJ.

Now I gotta tell you, remember I said that alcoholism is misunderstood. The

whole protocol for treatment was based on something that I wasn't.

It was alcohol and drug treatment, but it was for the only people that succeeded with this type, this type of, of, of treatment methodology were the heavy drinkers or the occasional, you know, like drug abusers, people like me who had become dependent and addicted to alcohol.

This is like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb. This 28 day treatment program. I remember they would do things like put put you in Group. Anybody in here ever been in Group? You know, you sit around a circle and you talk about like what's going on in your day, you know, and oh God, it was bad. You know, I remember this one day in Group, I'm sitting there and there's this this one guy would always share and always take up the time. I'd be pissed, you know, would you just shut up? Would you just shut? Nobody cares. I'm

what you said you want you just go drink. Don't get the hell out of here. You know, I want to share, you know, and, and it came time for me to share and I just like vomited up, you know, like.

And this counselor stopped me now this counselor would would introduce herself as an adult child of an alcoholic. OK, now I didn't know any of the recovery, you know, terminal. I didn't I didn't know the protocols. I've never been exposed to this stuff today. Today I have a lot of respect for for ACLA and the and the other, the other organizations that

that help people, you know, who've been impacted by people like me. You know, I'm all from all for those, those, those, those groups. Thank God that they're there. But but I'm like and no child of an alcoholic. And then she would start talking this counsel. I'm like, well, you know, I'm going to I'm an insane alcoholic from a librarian, you know, but but I don't say that before I start talking every time. What the hell is wrong with this woman? And she's, she's a, she's a counselor, OK? And you know, I'm not sharing, sharing. And, and she

Chris, Chris, hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. Let me ask you something. Tell me, how do you feel? Are you happy, Mad said or glad?

Like why are you crazy? I'm like psychotic and I won't kill you. You know, why would you ever ask an Alcoholics something like that? You know what? Because because I'm on the spin dry cycle in the 28th day. I mean you take every single emotion that you have and put it in a blender and punch tan and you've been getting close to like what I was feeling. I couldn't separate my you know, whether I'm happy, say it matters. I want to get out of here

and and you know, and now, now what the hell does that have to do with treating alcoholism something like that? You know what I mean? That that's

go into a gunfight with a pen knife sitting in Group, you know, so I, so I did that. I did the 28 days I went to outpatient because they told me to go to outpatient and I started to go to AA meetings on a regular basis and I but I didn't understand any of this stuff. I mean, how many people that walk into AA go oh, the steps out, the traditions. Oh, I get it. I'm in.

I mean, how many people do that? You know, I walked into what the hell is going on

and, you know, let's go. I was going to the close minded discussion meetings of the the late 80s, you know, where people would share like they wouldn't group, you know, about their day, you know, like that. I remember this one woman sharing this. She shared, She said, you know, I've got a real problem. I've got a lot on my plate.

You know, I bought a new house. I was expecting to sell my other house and my other house isn't selling. So I'm stuck with two houses. I'm like, how do you get a house? I get like $2.00.

What are you talking about? You know, I'm not like these people. I'm not like these people, you know? And I'll take it, you know? This isn't going to work for me. These people are crazy. They have houses, you know what I mean? Oh my God,

And you know, so so I thought I thought this, this can't possibly work. This a a stuff can't possibly work. But I'm going because I'm desperate. Alcohol isn't is kicking my ass. I am so desperate that I'm going to listen to to Mary to house, you know, every Tuesday night. You know what I mean?

And you know, go in meetings and doing going to outpatient. Guess what? They had an outpatient that I paid $65 a night for,

you know, so I'm going

that and you know, this is, this is all I gotta tell you. This is all wrong. You know, this is way wrong. I'm telling you, I can't buy into it because I can't understand it. How does listening to morons talk about their dad, How does that help me? You know, how does how is that going to keep me from drinking? I didn't understand. So I was, I was halfway in

there. I was halfway in. I didn't get a sponsor because I, I just couldn't understand going up to somebody and saying, hey, you know, you're, you seem to be doing OK with your life and my life's in the God damn toilet.

You know, I, I mean, I'm still living at home with mom and you know, I've got a $6.00 an hour job, you know, and I'm wearing the clothes I had in high school. I figured by calling you up every day for about an hour and dragging you down into the hell of my life, I'll feel a little bit better. You know how you free, you know, I mean,

I couldn't do that to somebody, you know, so, so, so I didn't get a sponsor, get a Home group. You know, I so happened that the groups I was I was going to were just a little autonomous, little closed minded discussion means they they weren't home groups, you know, So I'm like, well, the groups I'm going to aren't home groups. So every, every, every suggestion that

has been developed to hold you in to the fellowship long enough to discover recovery, every single one of those suggestions I bypass because I figured out why it wouldn't work for men. Now you got to understand, I am, I am desperate to stay away from alcohol. I'm absolutely desperate to stay away from alcohol. I, I, I, I can't continue to drink. It is going to Take Me Out. It's going to happen soon.

So, so I can, I'm continuing to go.

And if you would have, if you would have pulled anybody in any of these groups and asked them, you know, how much do you really want to stay away from alcohol, I would have won. I guarantee I was the person in that room that wanted to stay away from booze more than anybody else because I, I was, I was desperate at that point and I was shaking and shattered. My eyes were still yellow from liver failure, you know, and what happened was one day I was on the way to an, A, a meeting

and the thought crossed my mind that, you know, it's been a while. So I, I, I haven't been drunk in like probably 80 days or so, almost three months.

And you know, it doesn't feel like I'm really doing a good job in a, I'll bet you if I buy a gallon of vodka and I drink it, it'll make me, it'll reinvigorate my commitment to this whole recovery thing. So that's what I did. I bought a gallon of vodka to improve my sobriety

and I started drinking it. And here I am. I'm drinking glitter. Drinking. Drink. One glitch. Looks Good idea. Good. Second glass. Good idea. Third glass. Oh my God, what have I done? You know, that thought came on me because all of a sudden I could feel the alcohol going through me and I knew. I knew that I'd opened up the Cage store to the Beast

and it was just going to be a matter of time before it drags me through hell again. And that's exactly what happened. So what happened was think, think about this for a minute. Where was I insane? Did the alcohol make me insane? I was insane before the drink. I've never taken the first drink drunk

in my life. The insanity happens when I'm sober. And that event which lasted about six or seven months, which was just horrible, it was a, it was a worst period of time in my life. I can't even tell you how bleak and decadent and and and terror stricken and lonely

those seven months were. When the smoke cleared from that and I I struggled my way back to Alcoholics Anonymous, I understood experientially what the obsession of the mind looks like. I can be the person in the room that wants to stay away from alcohol the most, and alcohol doesn't care what I think. Alcohol wants to go back in my body, and powerlessness is powerlessness.

If there's something you can do to stay away from alcohol,

you on your own unaided will then how can you say you're powerless? Just do that. You can do it. Just do it. And I was going to meetings, I was going to outpatient, you know, I was telling everybody I was I was sober for good. I quit drinking for good. And what happened was I ended up drunk. And the way alcohol tricked me into it was by convincing me it would improve my sobriety. You know, alcohol doesn't care how it gets back into your body. So when when the smoke cleared from that and I came back

into the rooms, I was desperate. I had a willingness that was born in desperation. I still didn't think this crap would work, this AA stuff with all these losers in the church basement, you know, talking about their day. But I had no other plans and I didn't want to die. I had a young daughter at that time and I did not want to go out in disgrace.

Alcoholics, when they go out, they usually go out in disgrace and I just didn't. I just didn't want that to be, to be my, my life story, you know, Chris drinks himself to death in disgrace. So I had a willingness and I went back in and this time, this time I got a sponsor on Day 2 back in the rooms.

I went up to the sky fish food fill and I said, Phil, you know, I've been in hell. I want to get out, you know, help me. And and he did. And this is this is back in January of 1990. Okay, now I don't know what a is like in this area, but in in the area that I was going for my say, my first five years in a A, there was fellowship and Alcoholics Anonymous was basically

fellowship. That's what it was about.

And if you had a really good sponsor, that sponsor would get you involved in service. So his fellowship and if you had a good sponsor, there'd be some service. And I got a good sponsor and he had a service ethic and he trained me to have a service, service, service ethic. And, you know, things he asked me to do that I didn't want to do, I did him anyway. You know, I did not want to help you out. Now my own problems, you know, you want me to go help somebody. Are you kidding me? But I but I would do it. And

so I believe that going to at least a meeting a day

and doing these service commitments kept me sober, offered me a little bit of the grace, the grace period that we get each, each of us have grace periods when we get soaked. Some of them are short, some of them are long. But it offered me that grace period to stay sober long enough

to discover recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now here's here's basically my story. Remember, I'm like, I'm like freaked out. You would ask me Chris, how you doing? And I'd give the regular A oh, I'm doing great, you know, wonderful. Thank you. You know, doing really good when you know, inside I'm thinking you, you, you moronic hypocrite. I you know, you shared a bunch of crap and you know, you're a great flop. I'll show you a grateful alcoholic. I'll cut all four of your tires in the parking lot and after

about gratitude, I'll get to see it in action. You know, I mean, you, you, you, you lame brain moron. What are you been doing talking to me? I'm doing great, you know, So that's what I'm thinking. And I mean, I'm, I'm doing, I'm showing up at meetings, I'm doing the service commitments, but I am still unbelievably emotionally sick.

Everything is still very, very difficult for complete lack of dealage. You know what I mean? I couldn't, I couldn't take anything. I would, I would wake up in the morning, you know, brush my hair, drive to work, get get away from work, come home and sleep until the meeting. And then I'd go to the meeting and maybe go out to the diner and then go back home to sleep. I mean, it was very,

very little I could really do. I was so I'll now I just couldn't I just couldn't deal. And along the way along the way, this this guy who I became friends with get this my first friend in a this is how this is how it happened. He comes up to me in a meeting and nobody was talking to me back in these days. I mean,

you know, I was like, I was like that garage door spring with like 2000 lbs of tension in it and you're, you're afraid to stand near it 'cause it'll snap and hurt you, you know, that's what I was like. So people, people kept clear of it. And this one guy was just crazy enough to come up to me and, and, and he starts talking to me and starts going, oh, you know, I'm really worried. You know, I live in a house with three other guys and one of the guys just beat the crap out of the other guy. I'm really scared to go home, you know, and I go, are you scared to go home? I'll give you a hand. OK, let's just stop at my house first.

So. So he drives over, you know, I'll go into your house with you to make sure everything's fine. So OK, we go to my house. I get I get this gigantic hunting knife about this long, right? I put it, put in my pocket. I go, OK, let's go over. Let's let's let's go see what's going on at your house. I mean, this is how I became friends with my first friend. I was willing to like open somebody up for this for my new buddy RadioShack, Mike, you know, and

just out of my life

now,

now, now, Mike, a couple months later, you know, we still, we were going to meetings together and he was one of these guys that would go to the new age bookstores a lot. You know, he'd go buy like healing through pyramids, you know, and one day he'd be like pyramids, Chris, pyramids, you know, and the next day it would be like some Louise Hay affirmations. You even had me do affirmations once. Stand in front of the mirror and say like 50 times until you believe it. Chris, you're a wonderful guy. Something Chris, you're a wonderful guy

Chris, you want that No, no, I'm not aware of a guy you don't slam. This is crap. You know, it's like affirmations, you know, still untreated alcoholic, for God's sake, affirmations. So so he had all this crap and this, this one day he brings me this stack of tapes. They're like 890 minutes tapes of guys from Arkansas doing a big book study. I'm like,

Arkansas,

what the hell? Or is anybody from Arkansas going to be able to teach me? We get more thinking done by 9:00

then Arkansas and get done all day. And I bet you they tore up really slow like this off the speed, the table. You know, this is crazy, but I had a long drive to work so I took them, you know, and I put these tapes in. I put these tapes in. Let me tell you what somebody could from Arkansas could teach me.

I had missed 1/3, the most important third of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had missed completely the recovery part of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was going to meetings and meetings. There's there's promises that you'll get from going to meetings and I was doing service commitments and there's promises that you get from services commitments. They're unfortunately not the promises that promise that you'll stay sober, but their promises.

And I started listening to these Joe and Charlie tapes and they start talking about a program of recovery based on the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

And my immediate my immediate reaction to this was to get pissed. Like, who are these guys from Arkansas talking this crap about it is how isn't how we do it. And the birds will acorn group, you know,

about if this stuff was true, why, why, why hasn't my sponsor been telling me about this? You know, but I got all the way through these, these eight tapes, like 12 hours worth of, you know, big book study. And I was still resentful. You know, here's what will happen if you're new or just coming back when somebody hits you with the truth, the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to get pissed.

But if you're lucky, you'll have, you'll have to somehow deal with that truth. You'll have to internalize it and come to terms with that truth. You'll have to, and that's basically what happened to me. Now the next thing that happened was I, you know, I met, I met a girl in a okay, I had I like 14 months sober and I, I met, you know, God's will for me and

Oh my God,

get my sponsor really tried to talk me out of this. You know, he said Chris too, Dinglings don't make a bell, you know, and, and and he really said Chris, the chances of you running off into the sunset, happily ever after, probably a million to one. And I'm looking at him like he's crazy

woman, you know, and and it didn't workout because two people have to feel the same way usually in relationships for the stay together. And and I, you know, I was heartbroken and you know, I'd lost a job about three or four, three or four perfect storm, emotional storm, like events happened. And, you know, we'll, we will go through these, these sober trials and tribulations. And it talks about in the big book, it will get through them if our spiritual house is in order. But if it's not, they're going to take us out.

The place will come and we will be taken out by these events in our life. And I was, I was really, really close to saying screw this and screw these morons. And, you know, going to the liquor store, it was very, very close. But what I did instead was I looked over and I looked at those tapes and I said maybe,

maybe what these guys were talking about is true because it had been haunting me. You know, the information on these tapes had been haunting me for. So I broke out the tapes. I opened up a big book, dusted it off because it was a big book that I got in treatment. You know, you know how you sign people's books in treatment. I still have mine. It's like Chrissy, the craziest sumbitch I've ever met. You're never going to make it love, Harry. You know, I mean, you got, you got to see, you got to see this, this look.

So I dust it off. I dust it off and I open it up and I get a pad and a pencil, the big book, and I start listening to these tapes. And this is how I did it. When it came to an instruction, I stopped

and I went through that instruction before I moved on. What I was doing is I was kind of taking myself through the steps with these tapes. And what happened was I didn't know it at the time. And you have to understand I didn't do this out of a sense of virtue or a sense of being a better AF. I was doing this so I didn't feel so bad anymore. I don't want to feel bad anymore, you know, and maybe this, maybe this will work. It sounded like it would work

a little bit because these guys were killer.

Drop that Alcoholics, John Trump. So anyway, I start I start going through this and I didn't know it at the time, but I started to recover from alcoholism. Make no mistake about it, sobriety, sobriety, the way I define it, sobriety is the absence of alcohol in ones body. Recovery is knowing a new freedom and a new happiness from that, that

anxiety, depression stricken person that Chris was before going through

the 12 steps. So I started to recover from alcohols and I started to sound better in the a meetings, you know, because, because I, I started to get better and, and I learned early on how to give good share. You know, now you give good share in a discussion meeting. You know, you try not to say anything that's going to upset anybody or that somebody is going to come back at you after you share and, you know, correct you, you try to talk about yourself and about, you know, those stupid little things that you did today, Like listen to how stupid I was today. You know, a little self deprecating.

You know, if you learn how to give good share like that, you know, people, people respond. And I was getting people to that came up and said, you know, Chris, you know, would you be my sponsor? And my immediate answer was always yes, you know, I'm like, Oh my God, yes. And the problem with that was I was passing it on the way. My sponsor passed it on to me, which was basically just go to meetings, you know, taking coffee, commitment, you know, stay sober. And what was happening, It was a lot of these guys were drinking

me. They were making me look bad. There's somebody come out and go, is Harry yours? You know, he's drinking and hitting on the women and borrowing money.

I'll talk to him. Yeah. You know, so. So I came up with this idea. I don't know where it came from. And I remember the first guy I brought over brought over to my house. I said, you're coming over to my house. And we sat on, I opened up the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and we started going through it page by page. And when there was an instruction, I didn't know better, we both would do the instruction.

So in the early days of taking people through the steps, I was going through every time with them, you know, and, and what I learned 22 very, very important things with this, with this exercise. Number one is the guys who would go through the steps with me, Every single one of them stayed sober. Every single one of them recovered from alcoholism. As a matter of fact, every single one of them is still sober today and sponsoring other people, everybody that made it through and stayed consistent with the recovery process.

You know, the spiritual exercises and spiritual principles in the book, they're all still so.

And what I learned that was even more important for me was that I started to recover from alcoholism. I started to feel more comfortable with myself and my environment. I started to be okay where I was doing what I was doing. I started to not shoot myself in the foot all the time with myself centered self seeking behavior. And life started to get better. I started to get promoted more. I started to to get better

relationships. I started to get better, better friends.

Things started looking up in my life, you know, and I started to learn a little bit experientially about recovery.

Now, you know, this is an experiential workshop here. This is kind of really, look, there's some great speakers. I'm really looking forward to it, to hearing them today. But make no mistake about it, this is not an intellectual exercise. Many of us today are coming here to learn a little bit more about recovery, about the steps. Learning is not going to get it.

This isn't something that you recover from through knowledge, it's something that you're going to only recover from through action. And what happens is, if you come to a weekend like this and you're invigorated and you feel inspired, take that power from that inspiration and direct it into a series of actions that involve the 12 steps. Because that's what's going to be transformative in your life. That's what's going to really make a big difference

in how you move through this world. Listen, I'm at a point today where I am. I am unbelievably grateful for being on this planet, able to interact with people in it. To have this be a spiritual being, having this human experience that I'm involved with. I can't even tell you how grateful I am

for every minute of every day. I used to just want to check out when I was drinking. I wanted out. I love the Downers and the bulls because you just check out, you know, every, every once in a while I do the cocaine or the speed and that, you know, I'd have to drink, you know, because that's too much of me. You know, that's just way too much of me. You know, I, I need, I need to, I need to check out. So I'm incredibly, I'm incredibly grateful now. Alcoholics Anonymous