The Ultimate Weekend in Morgantown, IN

Honesty without compassion is cruelty.

Now I can tell you the truth about yourself, then I need to be compassionate about it. If I'm doing it to make myself feel better, then I'm telling myself a story to justify my actions and behaviors.

Meaning right here, my alcoholic life seems like the only normal one. I can't differentiate the truth and the false. So when we're looking at these statements in these considerations, we can look at it in terms of the stories I tell myself about my drinking. And I can look at it in the in the stories I tell myself about why I stole $20 out of my husband's pocket in the morning because I was too lazy to wake him up and he's already lost it for two days.

And then I was afraid to tell him I did it

because he was all upset about losing this $20 and it was just because he lost his $20, like $20, nothing to us. But I was 5:00 in the morning. I took $20 out of his pocket, not even thinking about it. Gave it to my son for two days. He's looking for this $20. And I didn't even think to tell him. And then all of a sudden I realized he's gone. He's like, where to go? Like who stole it? And he's thinking. And I was like, I took it.

I didn't even realize. Like I didn't eat. I just did it and didn't even think about how selfish and inconsiderate was to do it

to not even just let them know or like hey and then so he's going not sinking. He's losing money and doesn't want to tell me because I'm the main breadwinner of our family and he's feeling emasculated to begin with. And I just created a situation with my husband and made a situation that he's struggling with even worse because I was selfish and inconsiderate and couldn't take the one minute to tell him, hey, I'm grabbing my son and grabbing 20 bucks out of your pocket to give my son for for lunch one.

And I tell myself this story that I was running late. It was early in the morning.

I forgot. It's not that important. Not so. We do this all the time, right? And it doesn't make us bad people, but it. I have to become awake to this stuff. So did I apologize? Yeah. Will I do that again? No, because I didn't realize how much that really meant to him and how much that specific thing. And, you know, I didn't think about it. I'm like, oh, wait, I'm going to work. I'm busy

and I'm leaving him home unemployed and he's thinking he's leaving money than I'm working my ass off together and he felt like a total piece of crap and it was my selfishness and inconsiderateness that court placed him in the position. But that started that ball rolling because I didn't think about his thoughts or feelings and I was busy.

That's what I told myself. That's not the truth.

Couldn't be bothered and I was lazy. That's the truth. So we couch our stuff all the time, 'cause if I tell myself the truth about myself all the time, most of the time I feel like a jerk. Nobody will like me. I'm kidding. But we do this in order to. It's a shorthand, it's convenient, it's easier. But if I keep doing it, what happens? Can I start creating? This rather lies in my life.

I start creating this, this movie

and this script, and you're not living up to it and I'm not living up to it. And I'm telling myself so many things that I'm backed in the corners. I don't even know that I'm in

and I'm assuming now I'm assuming that you have my values because I'm projecting my values on you. Because I have these values, I have these belief systems, I have these fears, I have these ideas, and now I'm placing them on you. So now I'm responding to you as if you have these values, these lies that I tell myself that I assume you do too, because my life and what I think is the only way that people think. So no, I start treating you with disrespectful and unspiritual ways, assuming that you're going to behave the way I behave

because

the alcoholic like is the only normal.

So now I'm treating you and underestimating you and treating without love or kindness. And I'm thinking for you and I manipulating you. And I'm doing all of this stuff based on the fact that I'm telling myself stories in order to justify or explain myself to myself because I don't want to look at things that make me feel icky

and that humbled me and that might not send put me in the best light. And that's the truth. So we deal with Blues. We do it with character defects.

We do it with

traffic when I do. When I'm in traffic and I'm late and I'm mad at the woman in front of me, I say out loud, how dare you take your time and live your life and inconvenience me. Sometimes when I actually say the crazy stupid stuff that comes to my head out loud, I hear what a Jackass I am and I go home.

Let's see if I put it in the in the OR. I'll say I badly manage time and therefore your inconvenience in it.

We should have to start calling debates today guys, because if we don't, we end up right here. We can't different truth, the truth from the false or alcohol if life seems like the only normal one. We're irritable, restless and discontent. Irritable, I'm easily angered, restless, can't sit still, discontent, unhappy.

Those are, you know, like, think about that for a minute. How many, how many times has somebody pointed out that we're irritable, restless and discontent, in other words, and we're like, now I'm just having a bad day.

Sometimes we are. Most of the time. This is the spiritual Malik.

The doctors opinion actually breaks down

craving, mental obsession and spiritual malady in the first handful of pages and does it so beautifully.

So if you want a good description of what the spiritual malady looks like without alcohol in your system. Irritable rust, system discontent. That's the thing that drives us to drink when alcohol is not there.

Now mind you, in between drinking bout. So I drink and I stop at 3:00 in the morning. When I pass out and I get up in the morning, I'm irritable, restless and discontent. And that feeling that need to drink will keep growing and growing and growing until I do so. Irritable, restless and discontent shows up in two separate ways for us. It is either what we feel in the midst while alcohol is still in our system. Alcohol processing will be in your system for up to 72 hours.

So for those of you say, well I drank on Monday and then I didn't drink again on Wednesday, I must not be an alcoholic. Were you a Jackass on Tuesday?

Then you walked.

That's craving

when we're absent for an extended period of time and we're irritable, restless into discontent. That's the spiritual malady, Shaman.

So we can look at this in two different ways, in two different points.

If you're not an alcoholic and you have some other kind of it and you're irritable, wrestling the irritable, restless and discontent that your ISM showing up. And that's kind of the way we gauge that or how to look at that. So it goes on to say that a person who is doomed can recover, right? We can recover from this whole state of mind and body, except for what we have to do is follow a few simple rules.

This is not a suggestion. This is not a program of suggestions.

This is a suggested program of action, and that's two very different things. A program of suggestions are things that I might do if I feel like it. A suggested program of action is something I need to do if I want to live.

Two very different things.

So I like the rules and the must, and we have all done that. Have you guys counted the musts in the big book?

You know, and I love that. Have you counted the promises? Ever do that? Promises or results? I like the word results. I don't like the word promises because I made a lot of empty promises for cause and effect. I understand that what goes up must come down. That's causing effect. There's a lot of cause and effective results. In fact, actually it says we commence to get results, so that I didn't make that up on that. That's more, but there's a lot of results in the Big book of Alcohols Anonymous,

and there's not just after the 9th step.

Yeah, I hate that. By the way, the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous and I go, damn, really shorten ourselves because there are some better promises after 10 and some really awesome ones at 11 and some rocking ones at 12. And then there's a ton in the Lost Chapters, the chapters that nobody ever reads, called the To the Wise and the family afterward.

I didn't read them because I wasn't a wife at the time and I hated my family.

But if you actually read, I call those now the practice through print practice these principles chapters because this is shows us, you know, up and to this point. It tells us, you know, tells us how like to get to the point where we can actually figure out how not to be jerks. And then to the wives of the family afterwards says, well, this is what not being a jerk looks like. And I need that, you know, 'cause you can, you can tell me what not to do and that's fine,

right? But you guys tell me what to do instead, Because I can get that what not to do. But the problem is I don't know what to do instead, right? I got nothing to replace that with. So I, I know how I couldn't get that. I'm not supposed to be selfish. I just don't know what being unselfish looks like

and those chapters really going to great detail as to how that how that shows up and what that looks like.

So

the the book goes on and talks more and more about craving, but I think that we absolutely, I think we covered it in some pretty sufficient detail. Does anybody have any questions about what craving means, what it is, how that shows up, what the physical allergy is?

You guys know what the mental obsession is? What is it

repeating over and over and over and over?

True. That's one aspect of it.

So

that's another aspect of it. What did you say?

Awesome. That obsession that someday we'll be able to drink like normal,

that's part of it. There's many aspects of it, actually. One is truly what we call the mental obsession is literally the obsessive thought to drink. The other one is the old threadbare idea that we can drink like other people.

Another aspect of it is the inability to bring into our our thought process with enough power to deter us from drinking the consequences of even a week or a month ago. Then there's also a sudden,

suddenly I can have alcohol if I put it up my butt.

People do that, you know, by the way, in tampons. Because, you know, drinking is bad, but I can put it in other orifices and it'll be just fine.

There's a mental obsession that may not rear. It's like we had for two years and then and one night is there and and I experienced that it just after two years of not drinking. This is pre

and dinner with my cousin at a steakhouse.

Had had a drink that night also out of nowhere. Let's have double martinis before dinner and there was number stopping and it just came out of nowhere. So it was. It won't hurt me this time. Here's how. Well the fact that I could go two years without obsessing about it meant I was an alcoholic. So did you have carpet slippers well on when you were

so in? The mental obsession shows up in many ways. You know, we use the word mental obsession, right? And basically what we're saying is the way that we think about alcohol is broken.

That's really what we're talking about. Now there is a solution. More about Optimism goes into great detail about how this broken thinking shows up for us.

But it shows up not just with alcohol. And I'll give you an example. I have been a very good girl for two years and haven't slept with any newcomers. But he's really hot, so I'm going to have sex with him and it's going to be fine. Here's how.

And that's the same kind of thinking.

I mean, there's a lot of other stuff too, but that's the thing I'm thinking, right? Or

let's see.

We take, let's take the this time it won't, it won't hurt me. Or how about this? We'll say the consequences of the, the of the experience or the consequences of a specific behavior or certain thing don't come into our minds that they're terrorists from doing something kind of like, you know, constantly sticking your finger in a light socket, right? This time I won't get electrocuted, but we do that, right? So like, say we have a gloss and we want this boss's approval, acceptance and love.

But of course this boss knows we want their approval, acceptance and love. So what's the last thing they're going to give you?

Approval. Acceptance and luck. But I'm going to turn myself inside out through jumping jacks and hand stands and cartwheels and spin around in circles saying look at me, look at me, I'm awesome. And every time I do that, he goes and I don't get the acceptance, approval and love. But I keep going back together and this time it'll be different. This time I will really dazzle him. And this time I will show him how awesome I am. And this time, and this time and this time, aren't I doing the exact same thing?

I'm using human power,

so when we talk about the alcoholic thinking we can talk about, we're going to talk about it in regards to alcohol. We're also going to talk about it in regards to human power. That husband that you're just going to fix. If only you could just figure out what's wrong with him and help him to see it. He'll be better and then everything will be great.

I know no woman in the world thinks that at all,

you know, or that that if I only I have enough money in my in my bank account, right? There are two things women judge. Women, we evaluate ourselves by our shoes. Definitely I will get them purses. Purses and shoes are important. They're definitely things that we use to judge ourselves. Most of the time. We judge ourselves by our ability to care, take and love or how we see ourselves in those roles. So women, we tend to use super moms, super wife, super this, super that, right. We have a Cape

and we got the ass on our chest,

men. And I don't mean to generalize and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but for you guys, I mean, we're, we're kind of socialized to believe that you're supposed to be strong, stoic, you're supposed to protect

and provide.

So the our human powers kind of fall and say like what where I fall asleep, dream and I'm awake and start using human powers, kind of follow along those lines, right. So men will it's about providing, it's about working, it's about having a bank account and having the right lawn mower and having, you know, that sort of thing. If I provide the right kind of life in my family, I'm valuable and worthy. And women, if we have shoes and people think we're awesome,

we're valuable and worthy. But it's kind of the same thing, isn't it?

And it said alcoholic thinking that shows up in different areas of our life.

So when we talk about this mental obsession, we can talk about it in terms of our relationship with alcohol, but we can also talk about it in terms of a relationship with ourselves because that's really what this is about. Or really how do I relate to myself? So when we talk about, you know, when we look at it and say that

Jim, right, Jim was a guy who owned her automobile or no, he didn't actually. He got demoted and somebody else owned his automobile agency, right?

And he went to work on a on a Tuesday and everybody says what about Monday, right? And then Jim went to work on a Tuesday and had words with his boss. Where was Jim hurt me. Jim was hurting because he was working for somebody that he used to be a boss of and a company that he used to own and hit him right where it hurts, didn't it? The provider, the wallet, he had a resentment. He had words with the boss. He doesn't say he had words with the boss. Wrote inventory, spoke to my sponsor and made amends.

He had words with the boss. So what did he do? He ran away. He got in the car and said, I'm gonna go out in the road, probably in Indiana somewhere. You know, because this is the only airport that I've gone to that had more cars than planes in it. So I'm thinking if it's an automobile store, it might be right around here.

But he got in a car and he went away, right? I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'm not going to get to the causes and conditions of why I'm behaving the way that I'm behaving.

I'm not going to broaden and deepen my spiritual experience. Instead, I'm going to get in a car and a scheme to make more money in order to feel important, right?

So what does Jim do? He goes to a bar, OK. And everybody goes, oh, there we go, people, places and things. He's in a bar,

guys. I used to. I used to be a program manager for a halfway house

for people who are who are Mr. and had severe mental illness. I used to count out Xanax, Ritalin, oxycodone because they're not ATEX. Well, whatever the the state sanctioned addiction if you want to ask me, but that's a whole another story. But I'd be sitting there 1 Percocet, 2 Percocet, 3 Percocet, 4 Percocet. No, it's not alcohol, but I'm an addict and I'm an alcoholic and I have an ISM. And if I have to sit here and fondle medication, control medication that I know that's going to make me feel

very good and I have an alcoholic mind. At some point, one of those things gonna end up in my mouth, ain't it?

But if I'm sick and protected and I'm living on a spiritual basis, not one of those Percocets ever ended up in my mouth. It's an amazing thing. So we we talk about Jim and Jim goes to a bar and he's looking for a sandwich and possibly a deal

for this car. Wasn't the bar that was the problem, it was his thinking.

It was suddenly, and that's a suddenly, suddenly I had the idea that after two years of of accidents, I could drink successfully even though I'm not wearing shoes or carpet slippers. Or suddenly I could put alcohol whiskey in a glass of milk and drink it

and it won't bother me. And here's how. First of all, if you've got to say to yourself this time, it'll be different. And here's how

sponsor now, now, now, now. Hit your knees. Pray. Because if I got a complaint, if you've got to explain it to yourself, you shouldn't be doing it. That's what my sponsor always told me. It's like Carrie, if you got to tell yourself a story as to why you're doing it and stop.

But when I have that alcoholic mine, when I'm in that spot, I can't see that. I can't see that. I'm starting to tell myself a story as to why this time it'll be different if I drink alcohol and milk, I mean.

I can't see that because I'm powerless.

I can't see my alcoholism clearly. I can't see the way I think about my drinking clearly, because frankly, if I could say that my butt wouldn't be in this chair

if it were upon, if it were up to me and my thinking to be able to think, fix my drinking, I could be home right now, man. I could be getting like a well. I could have gotten a manicure today. I could be chilling out, you know, I could be by the pool. I got a pool. I could be on the deck. I'd be hiding for my children. But still, you know, if I can, if I can use my mind to fix my sick mind, I wouldn't need alcohols, not on this, but I can't.

So when I'm in that suddenly, I'm already in a point where

it's sudden.

So I need to broaden, deepen my spiritual experience

so that I don't have a sudden,

because that's kind of the thing here is you ever hear the term think to drink through?

Now my book says the complete opposite, says that I'm incapable of thinking the dream through and says at certain times I cannot bring a sufficient force. The experience of a ventilator a month ago. It means that there are times when I can and there are times when I can't. So I can't rely on that.

But how many times have we done that with other things, with resentments or with behaviors or with things that are not aligned for spiritual principles? Right.

We do it all the time. The little white lies and tall, the justification, the need for validation of accept or acceptance. Or that guy who's really awesome but he just doesn't know it. So I'm going to fix them. Not still that alcoholic thinking.

So when we look at this, I want you to ask yourself, not just do I have this with alcohol, but do I have this thinking currently today and with what cheesecake?

Maybe with my work, with my personal relationships,

with myself.

Do I have the no cloud on? There's not a cloud on the horizon, which is, you know, most of the stuff is true, but I don't gotta do all of it 'cause I'm not as bad as you guys. I'll do what I like. I'll cherry pick my recovery. I heard that. I love that one. I'll cherry pick the recovery that I'm gonna practice and then when I end up drunk or doing something completely ludicrous,

I will say, see, this program doesn't work.

Now how many times a week I hear this program doesn't work

and this is where I ask it. I get newcomers coming into my Home group saying this program doesn't work. I've been an alcohol synonymous for 15 years and I have not stayed sober. And here's what I say.

Have you written inventory? Not a three column inventory. Based on the picture, have you actually written 4, three or four depending if you conduct inventory. If you separate, have you written inventory? Have you written a sex ideal? Have you completed all your events? Do you do daily prayer and meditation?

It's amazing how many people who tell me that the program of Apple Oxnard doesn't work who have never worked a program of Alcohol Anonymous.

So sometimes we got that. No cloud on the horizon. Everything's great, everything's great, everything's great. I don't have to work all that hard

until it seems not great and all of a sudden I'm in the work tax of I can have a high wall or two after dinner and then what was it 3 days later he pouring out of a cab.

So where does this thinking show up for me?

I wanted to be able to get to Step 3, but I feel like we're kind of not there. And I, I think because everybody didn't say they're going to get to get through step three and then never do on Friday night. Is that, is that why you all laughed at me? Okay, I said this and they laughed and I was like, I'm going to do it because I'm awesome.

And I made it through the 2/3 of step one

not even but. So I guess, I guess we're going to

call it a night because I think we're getting a little restless and it's getting getting late.

And I will hopefully be able to cover the last little bit of step one and steps two and three first thing in the morning because I really want to move it into some inventory.

I, I really want to do. So I, I got some, I've had some really great spiritual teachers and I have some pretty awesome inventory stuff and some pretty awesome spiritual, you know,

things to try and I'd really like to be able to, to talk about them so we can actually do them tomorrow.

So with that, I guess we're, we'll wrap it up tonight and hopefully we'll stay on path tomorrow and get to where I want to be. Thank you.