The HOW Place in Kennesaw, GA

I'm still double fisting

I.

Hey you guys, I'm Scott and I have recovered

a network. Did we meet at the Friday night CA meeting?

Hey, you give me your seven-year kid?

No shit.

Wow. So that's how you get them. You just give them a chip, right?

Yeah. Wow,

about that.

Thank you. It's a real honor. You know, it's an honor to get asked to talk anytime, you know, anytime somebody asked me to do something in a a or in CA it it is an honor

to get asked by a guy to work with him. You know, the guy comes to me, says will you sponsor me? Or somebody says, will you come up here and talk?

It is really, it's evidence of a power greater than myself. You know, there was a time in my life when nobody wanted anything to do with anything I had to say.

I see some heads noddings, so some of y'all get down with that. So it it really is wonderful to be here and really, really cool to be here for the first speaker for a new speaker meeting. And I'm glad that you guys don't have candles burning right now because I'll be bummed if I couldn't see you. I know you're normally a candlelight meeting. So thank you for being willing to, to, to alter that tonight so that we can have a talk.

I got sober April 9th, 2003. Power of God separated me from alcohol and from cocaine for the last time

about 3:00 that morning when I passed out. And

I've done about everything

wrong in between that point and this point that I could, uh,

and I would not suggest that most of you do a lot of stuff I've done while sober, right? But the the one thing that that is clear for me and is not clear for many of the people I've seen who get drunk and high again, is that I have a real connection to step one.

That real connection to step one has driven me through the work over and over and has somehow kept me here in the grace of God. And I can't say that that grace has ever really been deserved.

But I've seen many other guys who who come in and end gals in and out of here over the years who get drunk again, who get high again, who haven't done

nearly the amount of stuff that I've done while sober that is less than desirable. And they've gotten drunk again, right?

And at the end of the day, the ones of us who are real out, he's an addicts. We get drunk or we get high again because we never got step one or we lost connection to step one.

It's just that simple.

I'm a member of the Spearheads. We are a Cocaine Anonymous meeting and we are a, a powerful meeting. And, and some, some guys and gals that I, I have the pleasure of working with being close to came together a little over a year ago and started to work together to create a fellowship that we craved. And we are open to Alcoholics, right?

And the reason we use the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we, we teach from that book. And our message is deeply rooted in the text and in our own experience with the text,

our own experience with doing the work that the text says to do.

And

what we found were that there were a whole lot.

Because a lot of us are and us, right? I heard Nick get up here and say it. I'm an addict and an alcoholic, right?

And there's a lot of us who are and us.

And, and so we found that in in, in many of us being in Alkis, we also wanted a place where we could really support addicts, right? For the ones of us that were both. So CA allowed us to do that, allowed us to create the fellowship and the structure to be able to have a place for the newcomer to come and to get access to power, right? To get a hold to somebody who had recovered and to be pointed to the power that they must have to stay

sober and become recovered themselves.

Here, here's a deal for me. Now, I'll I'll give you my disclaimer. I will.

Well, I'll talk to you about my experience and

I've got a good amount from the time that I've been here. So I've done a fair amount of work and I stay active in the work

and my experience is my experience, right? Some of you won't like it, some of you might really like it. You can take it for what it's worth and I I'm fine either way. And if what I say to you causes any resistance, I do invite you to actually to consider what that is instead of just shucking it as off as being nothing or being bullshit or being something that you don't agree with.

The name of this place is the how place, right? Honesty, open mindedness and willingness I guess is the reason this place is named How place. So maybe we can practice somewhere.

I yeah, I used to say I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I got sober in a room, in an Alcoholics Anonymous room

and and I'll and ask other people were going, yeah, I'm, I'm an alcoholic and an addict. And I went, OK, I am too.

And I drank a whole lot of alcohol and I did a whole lot of dope.

And I know this is an A, a meeting, but I heard somebody introduce a couple people introduce themselves as and does. So I'll get this out of the way.

I, I didn't understand

what it meant to be an alcoholic, right? I wasn't clear on that. I didn't understand what it meant to be an addict, not in the context of what the big book says. But I knew that my life was an absolute disaster and that I didn't have anything left and nobody else was around me. And that was probably because I drank alcohol and smoked or shot cocaine every day, right? Had to be a correlation between a really, really screwed up life and all that.

So I figured it was probably it. So when I came in, people said, yeah, I'm this. And I said, OK, that sounds great. I'm not too right.

And I and I stayed around for a while and I went through my first piece of work and I got some power and enough power that about at about a year, the obsession of drink every day went away. And it took about that long

and

it didn't begin to even ease a little bit until about 8 months. And that was after I had actually done a fifth step. I had done the most complete and thorough inventory that I could possibly do. Than I did a fifth step where the sponsor and something was lifted for me, right?

There was some freedom and, and I still thought about drinking every day, but it got it softened. I began to be some, some softening. And then over the next few months, it actually one day I woke up. Actually it was the one day I woke up and I went, Oh my God, I didn't think about drinking yesterday, right? And that was the first day that that had happened. And I don't know, 10 years, 12 years, something like that.

So

then I stayed around for a while

and you know, I didn't, I sat on my night step amends. I was not vigorous about making night step amends. And I, I kept hanging out in the rooms of a A and I got pretty sick while sober, right? And then somebody handed me a speaker tape in a parking lot. And that that speaker tape really lit me up because what it showed me that it was that

I heard this guy talking, heard him talking about what I was experiencing in the rooms of a a that I was in.

And it wasn't,

it wasn't the fellowship that I craved, right? Places I was hanging out were were not really where I was craving to be because I've been hanging out there for about a year and a half now. I've done a little step work and it was basically the same old shit day in day out in a A right

now. It didn't work with meditation. I did prayer, a lot of prayer. Right? Tent step was nothing more than a concept to tell you the truth, right? No practice with it whatsoever.

Tell you where it was in the book but didn't know anything about using one

so that fortunately gave way to me getting connected to

some guys that were really big into the big book, which is what I needed at that point and was they were they had just really kick ass fellowship men's fellowship. I needed to be around men for a while. It was good for me because my attention was really drawn by a pretty lady right and now some of y'all

couple of y'all know that right? I see you smiling right? I mean, the hell with recovery, right, Coming here and get chased some skirt because it's a right,

it's a, it's a distraction, right? It's a distraction of this. So God gave me what it was that I needed, right? And, and I was a fellowship that I craved that time that were men and, and they began to take me and teach me and show me what was in the big book and really begin to to foster something within me. And I found something that I was looking for in a A and what I really found was the fellowship, right? And I found the message that was really in the big book right

now. Here's

I hadn't forgot about the alcoholic in an attic thing. I'm going to come back to that. We're going to come full circle to it.

So what happened at that point was in this time, I'd made

a whole lot of, I've gotten pissed off at a bunch of people again. I had a bunch of unfinished amends and I've been living in a, a So I was resentful at a bunch of people in AA and people in my life, right? So, yeah, that's what I suffer from this thing that actually when I'm humbled by the first step, I get through a fourth step and a fifth step. Then shortly after, that same thing that was relieved from me when I was humbled by the first step actually comes back and I begin to think I got control of everything again. Right when I

think I got control of everything again, I start getting resentful because when I got control, you're supposed to do exactly what the hell I think you're supposed to do. And when you don't do it, I get pissed off at you, right? And then I end up with a pile of resentments and I end up blocked from the only thing that's going to keep me sober, which is God, because was it was the number one thing that blocks me from the only things going to save my ass.

So I made the mistake.

It wasn't a mistake. As part of what had to happen for me, I, I was led to believe that I could start with a fourth step right and get some relief that way.

And what happens in is there's a, from what I experience is a common belief around here that

we can just start with a fourth step and everything's OK, right? Like if we've been here for a little while. But what that really is, is that I'm saying that the 4th step is just a self help tool, right? That all of a sudden the 4th step becomes about me getting some relief, right? And that's not at all what is there for the 4th step is there for me to be free of, be rid of the things that are blocking me from God. It's not about self help,

but this was self help. I go get a book on self help and it'd be great,

right? There's tons of them in the bookstore.

So

I did that. I got a very little bit of relief, right? And I did that piece of work for the 4th step through nine step. That's what I did and I didn't look at first three again. So

2 1/2 years sober,

I really lost it. Completely lost it. I almost got in a fight with a guy sponsored, drugged him out of a car. Really spiritual, right? And

yeah, and but that's,

you know, that our lives have become unmanageable. Like

now my life has become unmanageable has nothing to do with the drink, right? See, we come in here, we think that my life being unmanageable is about alcohol. My life being unimaginable is about the other things. It has nothing to do with it. Because if you've been here for a little while and your life is still screwed up or areas of your life are really screwed up, that's the second-half of step one and has nothing to do with the alcohol, right? So that's where I was up against. And then I, and then and the guys I hang out with, we use three terms

that are interchangeable or synonymous, and that's current unmanageability, untreated alcoholism and spiritual malady, right? Use all three of those things and they all mean the same thing. And

our big book tells us that the, the hope of the alcoholic is the growth and the maintenance of a spiritual experience, right?

The growth and the maintenance of a spiritual experience. And it tells us that in the fourth step, right? So there's something to that to be seen. That's pretty clear right there that we, we really are here to grow and maintain that experience and that we're going to, we, we must grow and maintain it to maintain freedom from alcohol, right?

So

alcohol is not the problem.

It's, it's the malady of the spirit that's the problem. It's the internal thing that's the problem. You know, that causes trouble in my relationships, causes trouble in my work, causes me to feel lots of fear. I'm afraid of misery. I'm afraid of depression, right? Unhappy feelings of uselessness, right? And those things show up.

They definitely show up for us when we're drunk,

right? And they also show up for us when we're sober.

And if you come in here and you've done some steps and you've been here for a long time and all you have to do is come in here and hang out or do a little bit of step work and everything's been gravy ever since and none of that stuff shows up for you, then you do not have what I have.

You're not. You just don't got it like I've got it,

you know? So

I left that sponsor that I was with them. Well, I say I left. He fired me actually,

it it was the greatest gift he ever gave me, right? I'm not kidding you and I don't I don't have facetiously because I love him. I love him with all my heart, but he gave me a gift. He saw me crazy as hell. He didn't know what to do with me and he fired me right? And and that led me to somebody who really

it was God leading me exactly where I needed to be, right? And I got introduced to a guy who who knew something about a prayer, called the set aside prayer. And we began a piece of work starting with step one. And this is at almost three years sober. And he said, do you know that you can have a real experience with step one, three years away from a drink? Unless I know what are you talking about? He said well start this prayer and let's see what happens, right?

And a three-year sober. I got us connected

to what happens to me when I take a drink of alcohol as I was the day that I got sober.

All right, I have a three-year sober and I was scary as hell. So scariest things that ever happened to me sober,

but but it got me connected to what was necessary for me to really have power. And and the paradox is that I must be connected and aware completely that I absolutely have no power, right. And the paradox is, is from that comes power.

And so I got connected to that then and and it it thrust me into the work. And then that sponsor segued into a man named Mark Houston, who sponsored me for the last three years of his life.

And Mark did a great thing with me. And and I've and you know, we only have to give what we've got, right? That's all we got. And and so the more we get from the people, there's when you see people in here that have got what you want, man, that are in this thing, go get it. All right? Don't sit back there on your ass and think you're going to get it sitting in a chair listening to somebody.

This is about some action, right? We got to take it

and and he, he had, man, he had it, right. Yeah, what I wanted. And he started to show me some stuff and he started to teach me to question things, right? He really started to teach me to question things. And he got me to actually start looking at what it was to be an alcoholic versus what it was to be an addict. Because I was still an AMDA this whole time, right? And I did a lot of stuff, man. A lot of stuff. I died the needle my arm on the bathroom floor in 1998, right?

I'm sure I'm an addict, right?

And when I said I'm an addict, that meant all things that I've done. So what I actually began to do is I began to use a doctor's opinion and chapter 3 that you read from the night, right, to actually look at everything that I've done from 18 years that I drank whiskey and did dope. I, I began to look at it all right, What's the truth for me when I put this into my body? What's the truth for me when I make a decision to stop?

And here was a great question. Did I ever actually even make a decision to stop

that? Right? The interesting thing was, is there were a lot of things I said that I'm complete addict right when it came to him. But the truth was, is when they ran out or went away or the supply got pinched or whatever, that person died. When it went away, it just went away,

right? I had a bottle of brown whiskey by me because I'd always had a bottle of brown whiskey by me and some dope, right? And when that thing went away, it just went away. There wasn't even a decision for me to say, you know what, I'm not going to do this again. It just was gone.

So I really began to look at what is it that I'm saying that I am right, because I want to know the truth about what I am based in my experience, not in what I think I know.

And I found out clearly that I'm a, I'm a real alcoholic and I'm a real cocaine addict

and all that other stuff

I'm powerless over, right?

I go put a pile of pills in my mouth, right? There's something, a matter of my spiritual condition. I'll, it'll take me to that which I have no control over whatsoever, that which I have no choice in, which is alcohol and cocaine. Now we go back to the people in my group,

in our group and a lot of the people that are connected to us all around the country. We we go back through the work on a regular basis. One of the things some of us do is we actually as we begin the piece of work. One of the great things Mark taught me was to to always begin from the place of, I don't know right? Anytime I begin a new piece of work to actually begin from the path of consideration.

Now the consideration is this.

Maybe I'm not an alcoholic. Maybe I don't need God

now. You want something to make your sphincter muscles tighten up, right? That's a consideration that will when that's the thing that you've been really hanging your hat on is that you are the whole time, right?

But if I want to have a new experience with that, if I really want to get connected to right, I'm really trusting that God is everything, right? Second step proposition, God is everything. If I'm really trusting that, then I'm going to trust that in this consideration as I move into this piece of work that he's going to take care of me as I move through it. And if I find out I am a real alky and a real addict and I need to be here, then perfect. And if I'm not, then I can hit the bricks and I don't got to come up here and talk anymore.

And I still, when I go through it, I keep hoping that I'm actually going to find out that I'm not. I was just a heavy drinker for all that time, but that

every time I find out different, right?

And the cool thing is, is that in that consideration and in that prayer, I'm not kidding about this. And there's, there's people in this room that can contest to it from their own experience, right?

You really start asking the power that created you to set aside everything you think you know about something.

Hang on,

you get to find out how comfortable we are in what it is that we think we know

and and how how complacent

and lazy

we become and all of the shit we think we know.

And when that stuff gets pulled away from you, and it will right,

then that opens up for a new experience.

And that new experience every time for me, thrust me into the work right

I would never do. I mean, think about it,

who here has written a complete 4th step, a complete inventory? Let me show hands. OK,

so some people have. All right? So why in God's name would you do that,

right?

If it's not about you living?

Why? Why would we ever write down a whole list of all of the shit I've done wrong to all the people I've done it to, To all the people I'm pissed off at, right? All the things I'm scared of? Why would I do all of that on a whim?

If we do that comprehensively, I do it because I'm connected to step one, right? And that that step one experience has abundantly confirmed for me that I absolutely have no power. And that that gives way to the need for power,

which gives way to me making a decision to follow that power no matter what it looks like. And actually, what it looks like is to write that big ass list.

I'm writing one now. I'm currently in a piece of work. I'm actually in my, I'm in my 10th year sober and I'm in my ninth full piece of work right now.

Actually my eighth and a half my that second when I started with a four step. So I guess it's not a full piece of work,

but I do it.

Do this. I do it because

I'm absolutely I can't stand being complacent on the spiritual path, right? I can't stand just coming into meetings and sitting here like a, A or CA is a social function

because that doesn't feed me.

I become restless, irritable and discontented. I absolutely become miserable without connection and and you guys are great and the people in my group are great and I love them

and I love the people here. But just like Nick said when he introduced me, I couldn't keep his crazy ass sober, right?

I couldn't.

Well, not much. I loved him. How many times I met with him right next to real thing

and no matter what I taught him or any of that, Nick one connected to step one and Nick got high again, right?

That's all it is.

So you guys don't nor nor does the fellowship which is just I see the circle looks like a circle and triangle log on the wall back there.

Yes, a big one there. See,

yeah, right here. So the this part, we talked about the circle and triangle a lot in our group,

No, and the unity is the fellowship part. That's what we've got, right? That's one side of the triangle. But it's it's not enough to actually keep us sober. We get here and it's awesome to be here, right? It's awesome to remember that, man, when you got like 30 days, right? You're like, holy shit, I've got 30 days sober.

It's unbelievable, right? 30 days,

Yeah, that's grace by which we get that. But we don't have

anything yet, right? It's about grace, and the fellowship is what keeps us here. But that runs out. You know, the unity side of the triangle. It runs out,

you know, that's an ancient spiritual symbol. I guess most, you know it in case you know, it's an ancient spiritual symbol that represents mind, body and spirit, right? And an A, A adopted it and they applied our three legacies to it. So unity, service and recovery. Unity is of the body, services of the spirit. Recovery is of the mind. So mind, body and spirit, right? Unity, we come here, we find some fellowship

service is,

we talked about this a lot is often mistaken as making coffee or cleaning up after the meeting or any of that kind of stuff. Now, it's actually not what the authors were talking about. It's not what it was about, right? Service is of the spirit and that happens as a result of being recovered.

I'm able to come up here and talk to you tonight about my experience and I got it right. I'm free. I won't drink alcohol. I won't shoot any more cocaine because I'm recovered and I have a message to Carrie that comes from being recovered and that is the service. I'm able to sit down with another alky and if they got a first step, I can take them through the whole game. That's it. We're that's the gift.

So 3 sizes of triangle and we can find where we're at

in this thing. If we look at ourselves, we gauge where we currently are against that is actually balance is a fickle beast for us, right? It's it really is. It's I mean, it's hard. We are the most, you know, alcohol is just you take the alcohol away, you take the other shit away and then ten other beasts pop up, right? I mean, it's like a 12 headed dragon man,

you know? I mean, it's sex. It's

her sex, right? Money, the gym,

cars, motorcycles, whatever.

I went on a Star Wars obsession one time since I got something

I can't. I totally forgot that I just,

I was so obsessed with Star Wars and I was just like buying shit on eBay, right? I go from give me that shit. Just click, click, click, click.

You know, I mean, that's really what happens, right? So we, we've,

I mean, once the alcohol is out of the way and we've been given the grace and that freedom that happens as a result of this, the real works going to begin, right?

I mean, it's a lifelong game

and trust me, if you're real alky like I am, real addict, it ain't going away, right? I'm in the grips of a progressive illness. It gets worse. Never better,

never better.

We got a friend. Maybe it isn't.

If you haven't buried anybody since you've been here, stay around. You will. I guarantee you that. And I'm sure some of you have.

Here's a guy who sponsor I went to after I was fired by Larry was a guy named Ed Chamblee who still really were really close

and

sponsored a guy named Brennan.

All right.

Brennan Lansing

and Brandon was close, closer to Carl over there and and myself. We were around each other a lot.

And Brennan was great, man.

And 20 young kid got, let me tell you, got sober when he was 17, right? And, and when you hear the story of this kid from time he was 13 to 17, I mean it, it might as well have been a story of a guy who'd been running for 40 years, right?

It's like that

and this kid was so smart

and just young and and just had it right, got into school. So so smart man got into school and decided he's going to go finish his education here in Atlanta. Decided he's going to go up to New York, be a big Wall Street deal and pretty much went right into that and and got his foot in that game right away, making a lot of bank, right?

Got disconnected from the fellowship that he craved. Disconnected from the principles of meditation and prayer and working with others.

1011 and 12. Got up there and went out with all his Wall Street buddies one day. And I'm talking man smart. This kid was smart

and when I was Wall Street buddies one night and all of a sudden

the insane idea, one out right that the book talks about in chapter 3, right? That's the thing that makes us the real alky. That's what separates us from the hard drinker and the real alky. The insane idea that all of a sudden, after all of the shit I've been through behind a drink or behind a hit of dope, all of a sudden I can take a drink and I can control and enjoy it this time, right?

And that's what Brenda did. He took a drink and he called in. He said Ed. I took a drink

and then talk to him about some stuff and then

and Brenda said, well, let me think about that. I'll call you back, tell you what I'm going to do. I ran and called him back and said I'm not going to do that. I think I've got it

two, two weeks and a day later from that call, Ed called. Ed called me and he said

Brennan died yesterday morning.

Under three weeks, almost seven years sober and under three weeks from taking a drink. He died,

right?

That's what happens to us.

That's what happens to us when we get disconnected from this thing.

Whatever.

And it sucks, you know, because you get people you love and you don't get to tell them goodbye in here.

But second step proposition says that God is everything, right? So if God is everything and God is everything, and whatever God's will was for Brennan has been done right. And I'm sad that he's gone,

but it's a perfect example of what happens when I'm not here for long enough. And you know, Mark used to say it all the time. He say

my alcoholic ego tells me that I know what the day looks like, that I'm going to drink again,

all right, But I'm going to drink again when it's really, really bad, or I'm going to drink again when she leaves, right? I'm going to drink again if I'm really flat broke, all right,

Big Book said. And Fred's story is the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon, right?

See, we, we forget that, that, that we don't know what it looks like, right? All we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And that's what we must do is maintain it and maintaining it, if we're connected to it, that we're real alky

is not done by just being in here.

It's done by a whole lot of stuff. That's all contained within the directions in the big book.

No, the there's about 100 pages in our book that basically contain the whole game, right? Everything we got to do to go from

from awareness of the problem to surrender to complete freedom and to be able to maintain that freedom. 53 of that 100 pages is about the first step.

I mean, 53 of 100 pages is about one step

and and here's the deal. If, if, if you get it,

Mark used to say man, you get, you get connected to first step, all right, you'll, you'll run somebody over like a Mack truck to get the Step 2.

And that's the case for me. You know, I was atheist for 25 years, 25 years. I didn't believe there was a God. And I went, you know, I'm talking about getting my ass whipped by 20 people in the street in jail more times than I can remember. I never once called God save me. I called Mama a few times, you know, got her to bail me out. But I didn't call for God, right?

And

and I had that experience but shooting dope 1998 and I found out there is something right. There is something bigger than me. And it took the next

five years. I said in that experience, I said, you give me life and I will, I will make it right. I will do whatever I have to do to make it right. And I was given life again, right. I had another chance this game. Now

here's a problem. When you don't know what God is or how to look for God or where God is or any of that, and I've just made a commitment to God that I'm going to do something, but I have no idea what the hell to do about that, right? All I did was I tried to start praying. Well,

be careful you ever make a commitment like that, right? Because you may be held to it

and you may be drugged through whatever you got to be drugged through to honor that commitment. So the next five years became the last five years of my drinking, I'm talking men. Almost instantaneously, within a couple of months, it went from from having that experience to completely falling apart, right? Just falling apart. Within no time, I was completely alone, right? Ostracized by family, by friends, by everybody. And I spent five years almost completely alone in the bottom of bottle

and a pipe or a needle.

And that's what it took. Was that five years. And that was a part of that commitment. And on April 9th, 2003, I woke up and instead of driving to the liquor store, I drove into an AA meeting

and six days late, I took a took a white chip that night. Six days later, I, I woke up, I came to in that a a meeting, right?

And I don't know where the other six days had went or what I've done, but I was sober because they told me. I've been there every day

and I

I got up and IA voice in my head said there you have no idea how to live and you're going to die.

And, and I stood straight up in the middle of the meeting. The meeting was still going. It was a discussion. Many people were talking. I walked right across the room to a guy who had about 25 years sober. And I said, I just repeated it. I have no idea how to live and I'm going to die.

People, you know, somebody talking, they just stopped. What the hell is this guy doing right? I

and

and and then here was the the thing that changed my life.

One question, I said, will you help me?

I'm a guy who

who wouldn't ask anybody in here for any help in that one moment. And you know, I was, that was enough me, right? Wasn't of me to help, to ask you to help me with alcohol and dope because I've got it right.

No matter what, I got it. So it was that that's the surrender. That's when it happened for me. In that moment when I said, will you help me? And he said, yeah, I will. And he grabbed three other guys and they started to work with me, right?

And, uh,

from that day to this day, I'm taking a drink of whiskey or got any dope, right? Because of

undeserved favor

and a lot of it,

you know, it's

who in here has got a,

I'll tell you why it's so important that I, I keep doing the work over and over. And, you know, water finds its own level. So the people that come around you and stay around you, that you work with that God, that you attract yourself, they're vibrationally equivalent, right? And, and they, they need what you've got. And that's just the way it works.

The guys around me if, if I show up and there's guys around me, trust me, they are really about the the worst apples in the bunch, right?

Because we are all definitely,

yeah, I'm sitting over there. I mean, we, we're just, you know, we need to do this work over and over and over again, right. Who here has a successful relationship with a significant other?

OK, who here has tried but failed?

Yeah,

C Right.

That's the big book. My wife is here tonight, but she's the amazing woman. She said her name was Loreen earlier and

I,

I wouldn't have her and I wouldn't be married to her. I would have never gotten married right if it wasn't for the relationship with God that was given to me by being in these rooms.

And I wouldn't have ever gotten married

to a woman that I love and adore so much, even though she completely drives me crazy sometimes.

That's my own stuff, right?

If I didn't do the work over and over, I'll tell you why it's so important, right?

If you've been around for a while or you are around for a while and you have some relationships, man, that the as we move through the continued pieces of work, what has been

one of the great gifts of first of all, when we in my first few words, I didn't do really anything with the sex inventory. You know, we it's like we'll do the whole inventory. We'll just skip over those two pages in the book, right? So many people are like, you just don't even touch that. There's all a bunch of clear cut questions right there, right? It's like all these questions, but yeah, OK, let's flip, flip.

Yeah, when I actually started to really inventory the way I showed up in relationships.

I got to really see some big chunks of truth about myself.

And the cool thing is, is that each relationship, but I had a few since I've been sober before Lorena and I met and I've done made some pretty big mistakes in those relationships and been a real asshole because at the end of the day, I'm, I am selfish and self-centered to the core, right? And

but there's always movement right from one piece to the next piece to the next piece, because I see more and more about myself. And I actually create a vision in there of what it is that I'm going to look like. Because when I do that inventory on my relationships, see all the one night stands and all that stuff out there, that's kind of all one big thing, right? But what's really important to look at is how it is that I show up

in my my head and Sheehan or whatever he and he and whatever it is that you do, right? But in

my intimate relationships, there's a specific way that I show up that's different than in other relationships. Right?

Yeah. And the book gives us the gift of really being able to look at that,

and it gives it in a specific format for a reason, right?

And as we continue to do work around it,

what happens is it's like skimming off layers of cream off the top, right? We, we just start to refine it more. I start to see, Oh yeah, so this is what I did in this relationship. See, there's a question there says, what should we have done instead, right? And the answer is never ever not gotten involved in the 1st place, although you'll want to ride it with everyone you're really pissed at, right?