The Ultimate Weekend in Morgantown, IN

I am carrying an alcoholic.

OK, so this is a big book study, so I'm assuming that we're going to talk about the big book and read a little bit from it.

I If this is your first introduction or your first time through the steps,

how many guys? This is the first time?

Wow

here has completed their mess

completed who here is written inventory all four inventories including sex ideal at least once. OK this gives me a good idea okay because

sometimes, and I'm not saying you all do this. I have been known to be a big book study for.

But that kind of means is I come here and I steal stuff from people who sound really good, and then I act like I actually did it.

Yeah, these are the best. Yeah. But I don't actually do the work. I just quote Don and, you know, Mark and Joe and, you know, pass it off.

But one of the things that I was taught, which is don't let anybody read your big book for you. And what that means is we're gonna talk about stuff. We're gonna, I'm gonna talk about different aspects of this book. I'm gonna, we're gonna hit some highlights of this book. But the real work happens when you're sitting across from another alcoholic reading line by line, paragraph by paragraph. This is not a substitute for sponsorship.

In fact, if you read this book, which eventually I did do

and consistently tells us that solitary self appraisal is seldom sufficient, it tells us in the ninth step that we need to, we need to use guidance and sponsorship. You know, throughout this book, it tells us and it's it is assuming that we are using each other for peer support. So

when we talk or when I talk about or when I, you know, go through this, I'm not going through it nuts and bolts, sentence by sentence, word by word, because you'll be bored in tears

and there's not enough time to do that effectively. So and, and, and, and honestly, I would be depriving you of the experience of being sponsored.

And sponsorship is one of the most important relationships you're going to have.

And for me, the sponsorship was a model of my relationship with God because when I got here, you know, I was in open warfare with God. I blamed him for a lot of things that happened in my life. You know, I, you know, I kind of lost over and the flight deck is the psych Ward's,

you know, the fact that I had been institutionalized many, many times and met criteria to be institutionalized many, many times because I, I, I did die by my own hand and tried quite a bit. I, I came here very, very broken. There's a lot of problems, a lot of issues, and a lot of yeah, butts. And if you only know,

and

this book cuts through that we're here to deal with alcoholism. The other stuff does resolve itself or at least empowers us to go to where this stuff gets resolved. But sponsorship is where that stuff where that where that where that rubber meets the road. And we can read this stuff and we can talk about it. But intellectually understanding something and having an experience with their two very different things. And I'll give you an example. So

that's toot my own horn. But like, I'm like weird crazy smart like I'm completely incapable of functioning as a human being

in many, many ways such as I do. I cannot change a tire mean technically I know how, but somehow I managed to not be able to do it. That's why I love AAA. I can't parallel park. I lose my keys all the time. Somewhere in the airport today, I dumped an entire bottle of water in my purse

like that. The fact that I can actually, you know, get out of the house and get to work and do these sorts of things as if gosh darn miracle. But I'm really smart. Book laws. So at some point I got like in my head and it was this bright idea that if I went into the Navy, it would pay for grad school.

Well, and I of course I wasn't going to go in like, you know, like enlisted, you know, because I'm awesome.

So I have played

maybe OCS and if you know what that is, Officer Candidate School. In order to get into Navy OCS, you have to pass what's called the ASTB, which is a pilot exam. And basically it's nautical information and aeronautics as well as math and crap like that. Physics, you know, smart stuff, right? So I studied for this exam.

I have flash cards and study guides. I taught myself aerodynamics and aeronautics and I physics

and nautical stuff

and started for about 6 weeks and I got straight fives on my AST. Big straight fives means I qualify. I qualified for flight school. I can't parallel park in a car.

I could tell you how to clean flies. I had no practical experience with that at all. Mind you, I am still wait listed for Navy OCS. So World World War three happened and security is going to be on a on a air, you know, aircraft carrier somewhere in the air ocean or something.

But and I did get a discount in grad school. But but I'm kind of talking and saying like, look, you know, like I could technically tell you how a plane flies, but I didn't find my ass here. I had absolutely nothing to do with it except for walking up and saying, here's my tickets, ma'am. You know, so when we, when we're talking about this step process and we're saying, and I'm telling you that on a level of we're talking about this and we can intellectually understand it

experientially, understanding it are two very different things.

What I would like us to do is to be able to take what we're talking about intellectually and apply it experientially. And that's something that has to happen in the context of sponsorship or at least in the context of one alcoholic helping another. Because I can pervert all kinds of things and justify it by spiritual stuff, you know?

I research religions in which it was perfectly acceptable to have

lots of fun with lots of different people. And I felt that because it was written in a spiritual book, that should be my idea.

I was confused by that notion, by my sponsor. So that's where I say that sometimes we can, you know, we can take information and we can twist it. So this is where guidance, this is where sitting with another alcoholic, this is where accountability and allowing God to work through other people in humility kind of comes in.

So if there's something that we're talking about that you're not understanding, stop me.

Say I don't get that. What does that mean? Can you elaborate? If there's something that you need, there's something you're not right, you don't want to talk about in here, pull me aside. I've gotten conferences where people have described doing very, very gross things with bananas.

Like, I gotta tell you something, this is something I didn't have in my fist up. I'm like, Oh no,

there's nothing I haven't heard. There's nothing we haven't heard. With that being said, if there's something that you're not comfortable with bringing up here,

there's all these other people here. Grab somebody, ask a question, talk about it,

get some air on it. As as my sponsor likes to tell me, put some air on that. Because when it's intellectual,

the experience of sharing it is where the real healing comes. So sponsorship is necessary when alcoholic with another is necessary. This is not a substitute for that. This is just an opportunity for us to kind of bring together our combined experience and go deeper.

But this is not, this is absolutely 100% not a substitute for sponsorship. So please don't make it be so. Because I don't know how many times I have gone to a conference where somebody listened to a table that I made ten years ago and said in 2003, you said yadda, yadda, yadda. And I'm thinking, what?

I don't remember saying that. And then I'm thinking, you know, like, and I'm thinking like, really?

You really? Where's your sponsor on this?

Why didn't ask her? I'm like, well, why are you asking me? This is between you, God, and your sponsor, man. If you take one of us or one of us speakers or one of these people and you make our word law and then you create an idea around it, you're depriving yourself of a heck of a lot of freedom,

you know, because sometimes even our speakers can be jackasses. So with that being said, you know, this is about us sharing our experience, but don't take if there's something here where we say that dog don't hunt. If something I say contradicts what this quote says or something I say doesn't hit you in the gut in the right place, and it feels like that's not true for me. Talk to someone about it, ask questions. Don't just take that and squirrel it away like

like a squirrel with a nut and hide it, because that's going to be that thing that's going to keep coming back at you. And what we want to do is get free, not create more prisons for ourselves.

So first thing first is the first step, right?

So what is the first step?

What what is it? What is the real idea behind it? Right? When we have a lot of concept about what it means, we, we use words like powerless unmanageability, right? We read off the off the wall all the time. And of course, I was always taught that, you know, working the steps off the wall means I have an off the wall program. I says we as in us, right? The collective we

not I I came here and I

a week. I am powerless. We are not

together as a collective. We are not powerless over alcohol. As an individual, I am

and that's something that a lot of times we don't understand when I'm talking about the we are not powerless. I mean the fellowship of the spirit, not the sick and suffering alcoholic who has not been restored to sanity. He says, we admit it, that we were powerless over alcohol dash their lives have become unmanageable. I like to read that off right out of how it works because there's a lot to that sentence and there's a lot to this step. And I think a lot of times people come to me and they say, hey, Carrie, sponsor me. I'm like, well, we're over the steps. I'm on Step 4.

I ask a few questions and it turns out they're on step 0.

Yeah, because

there's a lot of ways to look at this step. I mean, I think a lot of us kind of knew that we were alcoholic. We didn't know what it meant to be an alcoholic. And I think that because we're all different people and we all have different experiences, that often we look at the things that define us and separate us rather than the things that bond us. And when we have we have this construction metaphor throughout this book right now by virtue of

growing up, you know, in the shadow of New York City

and reading this book and reading Bill's construction metaphor, when he talks about making water without sand, he talks about keystones and cornerstones and my, you know, my stones properly in place and all of these things, right? And I realized that he probably was watching them build, you know, the beautiful skyscrapers that are part of the New York skyline that I pay for granted. But he was watching me being built with the ground up,

you know? So he's writing this book talking about using a construction metaphor because that's what he's seeing outside

in his life in his apartment in Brooklyn and, you know, in the in Newark. You know, and I think to myself, you know, he uses a term and he says that we have a common peril beaming alcoholism a common solution meaning the 12 steps in alcohol is numbness.

You know, So when I say that we were powerless, what I mean is that me as an alcoholic have lack power over my alcoholism.

We coming together with common peril, common solution can gain access to a power greater than ourselves that can enable us to be placed in a position in neutrality, safe and protected. That we are restored to sanity in regards to alcohol. We're recovered from the hopeless state of mind and body.

That's a wonderful proposition and it is absolutely true,

but there are things that we have to do. So I think that a lot of times people think that they when I thought I worked the first step when I was drinking.

But the truth is, is that the real

what this step really means,

I think, becomes deeper and deeper for me all the time

because I understood it on one level. Meaning Kerry can't drink ooze is bad. Kerry needs to do some stuff

and then understanding on another another level

that my life has become unmanageable because I'm managing it. OK,

Yeah, that's a pretty simple thing. You have an idiot running it, running your life. You're gonna have a life that's run by an idiot. OK, but what does that mean? You know, how do we live in this world, not managing our lives, but still live in this world? That's a huge, huge conundrum to be in, right? That's a paradise

because if you think about it, I'm saying that my life is unmanageable, that I need to live by spiritual principles and there are things that I need to do. I do this stuff. The problem that I have with alcohol disappears,

yet I still make decisions every day.

I put my shoes on. I show up. I go to work. I pay bills, right? I take care of my children. I live in the world. Yeah. I live in a world in which I don't manage my life.

Sometimes,

sometimes I do, and I get some pretty who wrote his consequences. So there's a lot to this stuff. It's not just a OK, you know, I and again, I love I love it when people take to say, you know, it's I came, came to came to believe, right. I don't know. That sounds to me like a porn movie, but that's a sorry, that's a jersey. I mean,

try now

or it says that I can, he can, I think a letter,

but there's a lot to that. Because you know what, I'll let you, I'll let God with my alcoholism, but I ain't giving him my bank account.

All I've got with my bank account because I feel like God's, you know, pretty much an ATM, but I ain't giving to my children.

I like God with my children, but I ain't giving my job.

And so when I was talking about agnosticism, this is what I'm talking about, Areas of my life in which I still feel as if I have power.

So when we're talking about this first step, and I'm going to talk about it on multiple levels, this is what I'm talking about. So it's not just an awful, okay, check the box. I cannot drink successfully. And I think about drinking and my thoughts about drinking suck. Check now

my thoughts about Kerry Stock. My thoughts about you suck. What I think I know about you and me usually gets me in some deep trouble. And that there's some spiritual principles that I need to be applying to all areas of my life that I really struggle with. And that when I say that I fall asleep dreaming, I'm awake. What what I'm doing is I'm falling asleep to the fact that when I manage certain areas of my life, they become very, very unmanageable.

And I come to believe that there's only certain things that God will take care of, and the rest of it is my job.

And that's where I get stuck on the dash. Meaning that I'll give God my alcohol problem, but I ain't give them anything else. Or if I do, I make very subtle demands on God.

So when we're looking at the step, we're really looking at in the multi faceted way

from the straightforward way, what it means is I have a physical craving in the doctor's opinion,

and I love doctor so forth. Thank God for doctor so forth. You know, I was talking to Mike on the way here and I was saying that, you know, we're talking about my profession and a little bit about how how you know what I do for a living and what I do in Alcohol Anonymous search for two very different things. And I say that I really try very hard to leave what I do at the door. But there are times when I get so excited because I realize that a doctor self worth new and I take classes and trainings and I do all of this stuff about neurobiology

and I've had it, you know, trust me,

crap that you don't really want to know at all. But what makes me really excited about the Big Book of Alcohol, It's Anonymous, is that I can remember sitting in a classroom getting my undergraduate degree, and I can remember sitting in grad school listening to a professor explain what Alcoholics Anonymous taught me

and telling me the science behind it, saying, well, you know, this is what we know now. And I'm thinking, I've known that.

I said I have a book that was published in 1939 that said the exact same thing that you're saying right now. Y'all think you invented it?

Doctor Silkworth saw something in Alcoholics, didn't know what it was. He didn't have the technology at the time to understand it, but he knew something. He said we had an allergy, an abnormal reaction to alcohol. You know, I talked to you about my sister. I said my sister abuses alcohol because she doesn't drink it properly.

She has night gaps and stuff like that.

She tells me that when she drinks she gets warm and fuzzy,

sleepy, and that it relaxes her. Alcohol is a very opposite effect on men.

For one, I feel the first one or the 2nd and maybe not the third. I mean, quite frankly, the fact is, is that I'm not counting and I'm drinking at a large copious jugs of alcohol. I mean, like, what, what, what, what a normal person would consider a serving. And did you know, it's like when, when they I never knew this like fingers, like one finger, two finger. That was a serving. I didn't get that. I, I I like what I say. I have a finger of Jim.

Yeah.

Like I was like, I mean, quite frankly, I drank in the bottle with a paper bag on it. So like, I didn't get that. But I mean, like normal people shot glasses, you know, they weren't to play quarters with. Like people use it and said, measure that out.

That's what they have. And I would think the hell is wrong with you, You know, so people who met, you know, have very limited their, their ideas or quantities and alcohol are very different than my own. And I mean, very different than my own because they're having it. They're having a different experience that I'm having. And that's something that is what Doctor Silkworth understood.

Now, I'm not here to explain to you all of the stuff that I've learned in school that justifies this when I'm here to say is that my experience tells me this is true.

My experience tells me that I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol.

Now, I love this. And if you go to the Doctor's Opinion, I'm using a 4th edition. I know some people are partial to the third. I'm going to, like I said, I'm not going to do page you to death, but there's a couple things I really want to hit on and the very, very beginning of the Doctor's Opinion on XV for those in the 4th edition

and 3rd edition. I don't know because I'm she was too lazy to write down the patient numbers. To be honest with you.

It says we have Alcoholics, not us. Believe that the the reader will be interested in a medical estimate in the plan of recovery described in this book. And what salient about this statement is that there's a plan of recovery.

I thought that I was told take what you want and leave the rest.

I was told

that I could pick and choose the steps that I would work because I could take what I want and need the rest. I would take the first step. I will take the second step. I am not doing the third step. I'm certainly not doing the 4th step. I'll make amends to the people that I feel that need to be made amends to and I'll do prayer and meditation when I feel like it. I mean, that's the exact program that I would

work and that's probably why I kept drinking and dying.

I'm pretty sure that's why I kept drinking and dying, literally. But it says that there's a plan of recovery described in this book, meaning that we're going to have clear cut directions, that there are things that we're going to do. But this is not an arbitrary thing that this is about experience. So Doctor Selfor shares his opinion, but what he shares is an opinion that is now today we know ground of in fact that the alcoholic

has an abnormal reaction, that there's something physiologically going on with us that is different than the average person.

And what he says is, and I love that he says, is that there is a plan of recovery that like anything else, I like the word recipe. I think it works better because,

and this is my thing is like

we use the analogy of baking a cake, right? And I say that like, if I take away the shortening or I take away the eggs, I don't really have a cake, do I? Now I can put chocolate chips and pistachios. I could put cocoa in it, coconut, I could add things to my cake. But if I take away the fundamental ingredients, I don't have a cake anymore. I have a hockey puck.

So when we're talking about this plan of recovery, and I'm saying, you know, you can bring all their things to the table

and this could be a part of your plan of recovery. But the plan of recovery that we're talking about in this book is the bare bones nuts and bolts of the program of that box. Anonymous,

so we don't take away from this because really what it is is a very basic plan.

He goes on to talk about his experience with Bill. And he says, you know, this guy's been in my hospital a bunch of times.

He's been in my hospital, and he keeps drinking, right? And then he comes into the hospital and he says, you know, as part of my rehabilitation, I need to tell other people about how I've gotten sober.

That's part of the plan is carrying a message. I, I remember

being in my Home group and I, I, I was a member of the spiritual awakenings group in Bernardsville, NJ, and I am eternally grateful to the men who founded that meeting because we had the what we were right outside of New York. So anybody who came to Fox fellowship with the spirit came to my Home group and we got that and we would torture them with questions because we were on fire big book people. We had questions. I have questions from people back easy to ask you all. So you know, like we are on fire big book people. So like, you know, if some

in Colorado or Texas or California happened to end up in Burnersville, New Jersey, he had about 1520 rabid big book frothing at the mouth

crazy people asking them millions of questions about well, if you do this and what about this event? What if you do that? What if you spin on your head? What if your rotavatorium listen? What if

they were beautiful human beings who tolerated us and, and, and we're,

I think, I think we touched them. I think that like our fire and our desire and our thirst for knowledge, information and experience, I think really tickled them. So I'm sitting, you know, in this Home group. I have these, you know, these big book demigods at the time for me, you know, coming in and sitting down and just sharing in a meeting with us. And it was an incredible experience.

And I used to say my favorite question was, how do you know you have a spiritual experience?

And they would laugh at me every day. I'm one of them. I used to get so pissed off. I'm like, you know, everybody worships around you, walk on. You can't tell me how to get spiritual experience. What's wrong with you? You know, And mind you, it's very clear. It's right in this book. But I was I and I had thinking like, well, how am I going to know I have it? Is there a diagnosis? We can diagnose a spirituality. It's called the bedevilments, right? We can diagnose alcoholic thinking. We have a diagnosis. We have tests to see if you're an alcoholic. You can go up

more here. Drink, try some controlled drinking. Stop drinking for a year. We have tests for everything except for the spiritual experience, right? No, it's in here. But I didn't read my, you know, like I would read my book if you get my drip. And I wanted them to give me like this thing. I wanted them to like did like, you know, kind of bless me, but like you are spiritually awake

that let's you child go forth and prosper and said they would laugh at me

and and today I understand why. I absolutely understand why because this spiritual awakening happens when you when you put the experience that you've had with higher power and you bring it out to the to God's children.

It happens between you and me.

I can't keep it for myself. It's not something I do in a closet. It's not something I do my private space with my inventory that I write. Nobody can watch. Nobody could see it. I hide it my trunk of my car because God who made you read my my husband resentment inventory was sitting at the kitchen table about a year ago and my name is at the top of the collar. Like, literally there's no, he said. Carrie. ABCD, you know, XY and ZI. Look at it,

close it, walk away.

Not my business. Those are his resentments with me. You know, one, if he looked at the resentments I had with him or the inventory wrote of him, he'd probably divorced me. And two, that's his second column. That's none of my business.

Why

at the time I didn't realize that part of this spiritual experience and I'm developing and a good portion of it is about carrying this in the interaction between me and God's children. So I do this step experience. I have this experience with the force that I have this kiss that I have this six and 7-8 and nine. I live in 1011 and it's in 12 and it's not in the dotting the IS and crossing the TS.

It's in the sitting with this book in my kitchen table with another alcoholic, watching God do for them what they could not do for themselves and realizing that that's happening within me, you being my spiritual mirror and doctor so forth, tells us that he says part of his rehabilitation as part of his rehabilitation commenced to present his conceptions to other Alcoholics and pressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others.

That's part of our rehabilitation. It is not the crowning glory of our rehabilitation. It is not our graduation that we carry this message. It is how we get knitted back together. It happens in that process.

You know, if you wait to carry this message until you have all the answers, you're going to be drunk.

So and I love that that Doctor Sophos saw that and he knew that that it wasn't carrying this message having this experience

that we have rehabilitate or that's that's clinical ease for have a social experience.

And if you look at the rest of this chapter

in the next page, he says we who are suffered alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as as his mind. I took exception to that because I didn't have an abnormal mind. You know, I felt like everybody thought like me, or you should, you know, because the way that I thought was right and you were wrong. So if you didn't agree with me, you suck.

So my mind wasn't abnormal. You were just stupid.

So when I read that, I got really mad. I was like, I don't have that moral mind. I had no problem with the Admiral body. I kind of got that, you know? But it goes on to say that is it's not satisfied to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life. I mean, I was

that were in full flight of reality absolutely or that we were outright mental defective.

These things were true to some extent and to put you in fact or considerable extent of some of us right. But we are sure that our that our bodies are sickened as well. Our belief that the picture of the alcoholic believes the physical, which leaves out the physical factors incomplete.

And there's a reason why Billy starts this book with the allergy.

And here's the deal

this

regardless of what you drink or how

or when you started or when you cross that line, some of us crossed it. Some of us were born over it. Some of us were freeze dried Alcoholics. Just add alcohol and maniac. Some of us had that experience, some of us didn't. But the the thing that binds us is our common peril and common solution. The common peril meaning that I didn't just drink because as I was maladjusted to library outright mental defective that there is something physically

going on. So whether or not used ship sniffed sit Chardonnay or you got some vodka you're you're the way that you drank is irrelevant. It's the way that your body responded to it that matters and Bill's smart because he knows we look for the exception. He's always the exception. There's always a reason why this doesn't bother me because if you knew

and that's why, that's why he puts it right out in front

and he says, look, man, some of us are more messed up than others. Some are sicker than others. The bottom line is this is we have an abnormal reaction. Our bodies are sickened as well. And as an alcoholic, I can understand that. As an alcoholic, I know what what he's talking about. What he's saying is once I start drinking, I can't stop. And when I stop, I feel itchy inside. That's the way I describe it. We say irritable, restless and discontent. I say I feel itchy inside me.

I ain't right.

So

when we go to this and say that our theory that the doctors theory that we have an allergy interests us to laymen, the opinion of a soundness, namely little, but it's ex problem drinkers and here's a big question. The consideration method, and here's the bottom line is the consideration method of going through the steps is probably one of the best ways of reading this book is turning every declarative statement into a question.

A declarative statement says we Alcoholics,

he asked Alcoholics of our type Wang makes a statement like that. What he's saying is, is this your experience? So I asked ourselves, as an alcoholic, does this explanation make sense? Absolutely, absolutely makes sense. It makes sense as to why I can say to myself, I'm only going to have two, but I have 10. It makes sense that once I start, there's something going on inside of me that I can't stop. It makes sense as to why I have to drink before I

because I'm not feeling the second one. I'm feeling the second one on my 15th because my body is different.

And here's the deal. And again,

really, like I said, getting once you get past the grammar of this book, it is brilliant

because I'm first blush

one, this was page one, which is why I started with it. You know, I could go through the appendices and I could go through the recovery rates and all that other stuff and do all those bells and whistles and talk about bills, you know, trip to Akron. I could talk about Doctor Bob being planted under the table. I can talk about Henrietta sibling. I can give the whole history of Alcoholics Anonymous. Absolutely can't. But there are speakers who do way better than me, you know. So I wanted to start on page one because I thought

that really was page one until we remembered the book. There have been changes to the big book. The legend that there are no changes to the big Book. That's actually bull crappies. They've changed the big book. And the the worst, the most horrific, most terrible change was putting the doctor's opinion in the damn Roman numerals. Because I'm an alcoholic and I go right to page because why? I don't read appendixes. I don't read shit with the Roman numerals. I go right to Page 1 and start highlighting stuff and some of the most important information

wasn't on page one. It's not anymore. So as an alcoholic, you know, I missed a bunch of crap the first time I read this book and it's a good. That's why we have sponsors because my sponsor said, oh, you started a bill story. You realize that there's a doctor's opinion before that,

you know, because my sponsor, when I first went through the book, when I first went through the steps, you know, I had to read the 1st 164 pages before I even sat down to the table and started working the steps. I think it was a test to find out how much crap I would, you know, how much full of crap I was. I mean, I, I think, I, I think that it was one of those times and where like I was such an angry, ornery little bastard that I think, I think pretty much he was hoping I didn't read it. So he didn't

to sponsor me. I'm pretty sure that was the case, you know, because I was angry and I was miserable and I was a really, I was a know it all little shit. So I'm pretty. He told me to go read that first 164 pages and call him when I was done. And I read it in one day,

but I missed the doctor's opinion because I didn't read wrong renewals. You said 164. We started on page one. I had to go back and read the doctor's opinion.

So I think that's one of the biggest tragedies that we missed that. With that being said, go smart because he started with the craving. He started with something that I can't change. He started with something where I can't fix you or make you different in order for it to go away. Now, the mental obsession, the spiritual malady, that's something that I can still externalize and say, it's your fault.

It's something I could still say, well, if my husband wasn't such a jerk and my family wasn't this, and that wasn't this and this wasn't that, yadda yadda, yadda. If I could fix that stuff, it'll go away. I can drink successfully

what he starts with the craving and the physical craving and the physical allergy for a reason, because it starts with something I can't change about myself. I can't change the fact that I agree, not something I can wear contacts, but I take them off of my Korean eyes. I can't change the fact that I'm pale, as you know, they glow in the dark. You know, I, I can tan and I, you know, and it'll go away and also glow in the dark 90% of the time.

I can't change the color of my skin. I can't change my eyes. I can dye my hair, but it's gonna keep growing back.

So on some level, right, we we have some, we recognize that there are physical things that we can't change or fix.

So by starting with the craving, you started with that one thing that we have some level of acceptance with anyway.

Brilliant men, terrible writer.

So

the doctor's opinion goes on to explain that there's a need for spiritual experience. He calls it a psychic change. He talks about psychology. And again, I'd love to go. I would, I have hours and hours of information on the history of addiction, history of addiction treatment and what moral psychology is. But I'll give you a kind of a quick idea of why

Doctor Silkworth is so incredible is because originally like most of the up into this point and up into the idea of the disease concept, which by the way was also coined by Doctor Silkworth. So not only did he find out when neurobiologists have just figured out about 10 years ago, but he also

kind of codified this disease concept, meaning that alcoholism is a malady or a disease or some constellation of symptoms right now. He kind of proposed this

throughout this book, though. Talks about it in comparison to cancer, he goes on. No, He goes on to talk about it and say, well, you know,

is it possible that this isn't because you're a bad person, but because you have something going on with you?

This is what he puts forward. Prior to this, the belief was that Alcoholics were morally corrupt. You ever hear the term eugenics? Do you know what eugenics is?

For those of you who don't, eugenics was like, basically.

Genetic engineering. Before genetic engineering there was a belief that traits, personality traits were inherited and so if you were an alcoholic you were considered to be morally inferior and therefore you were unrelated to society and you should be separated from good folk.

OK, now Hitler took it a little too far, but essentially his ideas were based on eugenics, which was actually

for who is actually an American ideal, actually perpetuating the Princeton, Princeton University. You guys know that that Hitler didn't come up with that idea. We did. But one of the things that's very significant about it is they saw social ills such as addiction, such as alcoholism, as being a genetic thing and that people were genetically inferior.

I want to think that we actually did, as a policy in our country, was actually to sterilize people who are in institutions against their will and without their knowledge. And you know who was sterilized? People like us,

that's exactly what it sterilized. Whereas, well, if you can't get rid of drugs, just don't let them breed.

But that's honestly how our society viewed alcoholism. And then we get this little guy working at Towns hospital who absolutely changed the world and changed the way that the world viewed alcoholism. Holy crap, even the Washingtonians believe that alcoholism was a moral failing.

people have said it, but Doctor so course, so first was the first person who said it and something was done with it. And in a way that we have this recipe for recovery, meaning the 12 steps about God's notes.

So he proposed that something more than moral psychology, meaning teaching bad people not to be bad anymore, was needed for an alcoholic to recover.

You know who here seen the movie Quills? Nobody hear some movie books. You guys haven't? OK,

Do you guys know who bedroom is? What you have You know bedroom Bedlam. OK Bedlam is a Hospital in London in which they put maniacs and dip. Sonics doing dibsonics are

Alcoholics.

These to lock us up. Anybody who's ever seen the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula, you guys seen that, right? OK, so that was Bedlam and that's what they did to us.

They sprayed is what? Hot and cold water. They tied us up, they put us behind bars. We got wet green. We had we did weird things. Maybe we ate some bugs. I'm not really sure. And that's what the movie said. But the idea is that the solution to deal with Alcoholics was to remove them society and lock them up.

And Doctor Selforth said something very different.

He said that Alcoholics had been rehabilitated,

that we can have a psychic change,

that we could have a profound spirit rearrangement of our spiritual

compass

and the by virtue of that, we would no longer do the crazy things that we do.