The Fellowship of the Spirit in Bayside, Queens, NY

OK, well I am. My name is Chris. I'm an alcoholic still. Hi Chris. You know a little bit about my experience with Fellowship of the Spirit

as it was, as it was mentioned earlier, the Fellowship of the Spirit really started out in Colorado and it started with, with some people who became incredibly influential to, to me,

there was a Denver young people's group and a bunch of people that were involved with that

who really, really ended up becoming my spiritual mentors. So Fellowship of the Spirit, these conferences mean a lot to me. I get the opportunity to do a number of things and it's always special to be, to be able to come and share a Fellowship of the Spirit because I believe it goes directly back-to-back

to my teachers.

I remember, I remember probably the most fun event I've ever done in my life was I think it was the 2007 Fellowship of the Spirit when I did it with our friend Peter M and, and Mark H and Doug M, that was just, that was just a lot of fun. There's, you know, the New York crowd, the New York people just have a wonderful presence and a wonderful attitude. And, and, you know, I was really, really,

really, really touched to be called up today and say, hey, you want to pinch it for this? And I had to check with my wife and I was just hoping she was going to say, yes, you know what I mean? And I got lucky and, and, and here, here I am,

Kerry and I are going to going to do a session. We're going to talk a little bit about step one. We're going to mix it up a little bit with our with our story so that, you know, we're, you know, sitting behind the right mic. And

I think step one is quite possibly the most misunderstood step

in Alcoholics Anonymous or any of the fellowships today. People pay lip service to it, but don't don't fully understand the ramifications of an admission of alcoholism. I,

I,

I was fast on the way to drinking myself to death in the 80s. I started partying in the very late 60s and I made it through almost through the entire 80s partying like a maniac. And I understood, I understood that alcohol was going to Take Me Out real soon. I, I got so chronic with my drinking that toward the end, I, you know, I'd really, I need to be detoxed. I would go into the D TS

and it was not pretty when when, when I was when I was separated from alcohol. So I knew alcohol was going to kill me. But that ain't half the problem, you know. I thought, OK, OK, I'm going to. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go to treatment and then I'm going to stop drinking and then everything is going to be fine.

Well, guess what? Everything wasn't fine. Everything was very far from fine

when I separated from alcohol after putting myself in treatment. I was going absolutely out of my mind,

ended up ended up relapsing, ended up going back out for about 5 or six or seven months of the absolute worst drinking ever. And then I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous between Christmas and New Year's of 1989. And I think, I think what what saved me

was having having a sense of urgency about Alcoholics Anonymous and my participation in it. I had a willingness that was born of sheer desperation. But again, I didn't understand what the first step was. I knew I had to quit drinking. But

if you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and you view your problem, you continue to view your problem as drinking alcohol, and that's all you see, you could be missing a lot. And I'll describe it by telling a short a short story. The last three or four years of my drinking, what would happen is

I would get off of work. I had a terrible job. I was a bad electrician. I was blowing stuff up on a daily basis.

It was it was just not good as getting electrocuted like all the time or electrocuting other people all the time and it was a mess. But but anyway, what would happen is I would get I would, I would get off of work, you know, I mean work, work ended at 4:30 and I would haul ass to the liquor store. I mean, if you were doing 30 in a in a 40 mile an hour speed, you know,

in front of me or something, I would run you off the road. I was on a mission

and I would go to the liquor store and I had a certain liquor store that I went to and, and if it was winter, I'd be drinking bourbon. If it was summer, I'd be drinking vodka. I knew right where it was. I was in the liquor store. I grabbed my bottle, I'd go up and I'd pay for it and I'd, I'd, I'd head home, you know, 100 miles an hour. And it's second I got home, the first thing I did was pour a gigantic drink. And that that was basically my my day.

Now. I remember this one time I get to the liquor store, I run up. I grab my vodka

and there's somebody in line in front of me and it's this woman. And this woman is is, is talking to the to check out guy. She's going, do you know what kind of wine goes with tilapia? And the guy's going well, I think that there's a Chardonnay from the California region with quite, you know, quite a nice bouquet. You know it, it goes well with white. Now I am freaking out, right? I'm like, are you crazy?

Are you crazy? Wine with what? Are you nuts? You would get this, get that Lady out of here. You know it would give her a bottle of Gallow and get her the hell out of my way. I need to buy this vodka and I need to get out of here. I got a problem.

I'm sober,

you know what I mean? I'm sober. Like I can't stand it. One more second now

think about this. Think about this. Is alcohol really my problem? You know, I'm I'm viewing alcohol as a solution to an incredibly messed up psycho spiritual emotional problem that I have the bondage of Chris, right? I mean, that's what that's what I'm basically dealing with. I cannot.

Sobriety is intolerable. It's untenable to me. So I need, I need alcohol to check out,

I need to, I need to, to go away from this reality. Now, you know, there's been a lot of really amazing people who've, who've, who've studied alcoholism, who studied addiction, and there's been some people who I believe were really enlightened as far as what our problem really was. And a couple of them were

were the Co founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob.

They understood that you do not fight alcoholism with sobriety. They had tried it 1000 times. You fight it with spirituality and spiritual living. That's how we address our alcoholism. That's how we participate in the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And we hopefully place ourselves in the sunlight of the Spirit so that God can do what God does, which is keep us separated from alcohol

and enable enable our lives to to come back together. Now,

if you're working on the wrong problem,

you know, if if you've got the wrong problem, you're working on the wrong solution. And that's what happened when I first came in to Alcoholics Anonymous. I was working on not taking one drink one day at a time, because that's what I was hearing. And there was some people who were with me. They were like this. I'm just not joking Today, you know what I mean? Even if my ass falls off, I ain't taking a drink.

I'm aware.

Do you want what I have? No. No, Please no.

So, so I what I was doing was I was working on the wrong problem. Now, I'm not saying that it's not important for us to stay separated from alcohol. It absolutely is. Everything starts with separating from the drink because I don't know that you can engage in a spiritual process when you're self centeredly drinking yourself to death. There definitely has to be that separation, but that's not what we work on.

We don't do this to alcohol. Just stay over there. We don't, we don't, we don't do it that way. What we do is we engage in in a spiritual process. So when we're looking at step one, we need to understand that alcohol is going to kill us.

But alcoholism is our problem. It's the ISM that's, that's, that's going to drive us out of our mind. It's the ISM that pushes us back to alcohol because we just can't take it anymore. We can't take it one more minute. Those AAS are out of their minds. You know, I, you know, I don't understand. This time it's going to be different. You know, all the crazy things that we say when we put alcohol back in our, in our body

now, Now, Bill Wilson understood this. There's a number of, there's a number of people that have understood it in the past.

There was a, there was a wonderful speaker out of California. This guy was absolutely beloved. His name, his name was Chuck C He's gone many decades now, but he kind of changed the landscape as far as as how people gave talks at AA groups up until that time. Mainly what you would hear is you would hear drunk logs. Well, all of a sudden Chuck C comes around and he starts to give spiritual talks

in the A A groups. You know, he'd be asked to speak and he'd talk about spiritual principles

and spiritual living. And he became very, very beloved.

You know,

it probably, you know, five nights out of seven, he was speaking somewhere people loved him. And and he would he would say something that when I first heard it didn't make a lot to sit a lot of sense to me, but makes a lot of sense to me now. He said there, this is one of the things that he would say. He would say there's only one problem. And within that problem are all other problems

and there is only one solution. And within that solution are all other solutions, and the problem is a separation from God.

And the solution is connection to God. And how I view alcoholism these days, and how I view drug addiction these days is an incredible separation from the comfort of the divine.

In other words, I'm behind the tilapia lady in line.

I'm out of my mind now. My first six months in AA, I was behind the tilapia lady every day. You know what I mean? I was sorry. I was like, I remember my, my rip. My hand would get really numb because I was clenching my fist like this. For like the first six months. I was whacked out of my mind with alcoholism.

I mean, it's, it's, it's so spiritually aggressive alcoholism that, you know, I don't know how I made it. I don't know how I stayed sober except from the, the, the absolute grace of God, because it was, it was like being behind the tilapia lady, you know, 14 hours a day for six months now.

Now when you look at step one, you see you see the the physical craving they talk about in the book Alkali synonymous the doctor's opinion and the first two chapters are pretty much on step one. There is a solution more about alcoholism. Pretty much they, they contain a lot of information, but there's,

there's specifically about and on step one and in the book he nails it, Bill nails it.

And I got to tell you, one of the things that I do today is I have a lot of interaction with professional addictive illness treatment. I'm on a couple of boards and, and I, you know, I'm, I'm always doing something and it's symposiums or workshops or whatever. And, and I really, I really get around the, the professional addictive illness and alcoholism treatment people. And I've got to tell you this, that probably

probably 8 out of 10 treatment centers and eight out of 10 treatment professionals don't even understand what the problem is.

And you are paying them to treat you. They think, they think that your problem is a lack of medication or your problem or your or your problem can be solved with a list of triggers. You know, just watch out for these triggers. Listen, folks, the first step. And the problem of alcoholism is much bigger than that.

It's gigantic. Because here's what it starts with.

It starts with a physical allergy, a physical craving. Which means this is what it looks like. This is how it presents. The first drink is always going to do one thing. It's going to ask for the 2nd, the 2nd is going to insist for on the 3rd, and the 3rd is going to demand the 4th. And the more alcohol in your body, the more the craving is present. That's why we get passed out, blacked out drunk, tongue chewing, knee walking, not able to operate our own pants, zipper drunk.

It's because it's because of that craving.

Now the real tricky part is the obsession of the mind. This is where probably 7 out of 10 Alcoholics,

NAA, don't even realize how big the problem is. You know, we're to a degree we are all minimizing because this is basically what the obsession of the mind is. We have no adequate defense on our own power. We've got no adequate defense against putting alcohol in our body. In other words, we're powerless. Powerless. We are not in charge of when alcohol is going to go back in our body.

That's what powerlessness means.

There's a power that can work in you and through you, that can keep you separated from alcohol, absolutely. But it ain't you, you know? So on our own, unaided will, we can wish to not drink anymore. As here's here's a story from my experience. I sign myself into a 28 day treatment center. Nobody was pushing me there. I wasn't yet. I signed myself in 'cause I was in trouble.

I got out of 28 days and they told me you should go to outpatient. So I signed up for outpatient.

They told me I should go to some AAA meetings. So I was going to AAA meetings. I told everybody in my life, I'm done drinking. I told my boss, I told my family, I am through, I am absolutely through. And I gotta tell you, there's not a person in any of the a A meetings I was going to that wanted to stay separated from alcohol more than me. I was absolutely done with it. And on the way to an, A, A meeting,

I, the thought crossed my mind that if I bought a gallon of vodka and I drank it, it would help me do the same stuff better.

I would, I would remember what it's like to be drunk and hungover and, and I would, I would increase my, my, you know, my participation in this recovery stuff. So I got drunk to improve my sobriety. I now really have full understanding of what the obsession of the mind can look like.

Alcohol doesn't care how it goes back in your body. If it has to convince you that it's good for your sobriety, that's what it'll do. So, and here's what happened. I'm pouring out the vodka and I'm drinking Good ideas is a good idea. I had a second one. This is good. I like, I like the way I think. I, I, I start,

I start into the third glass of vodka and I start to get drunk and I go, Oh my God, what have I done? I've opened up the cage door to the beast and the beast is going to drag me around for who knows how long. How stupid could I have been?

So think about this. They talk about being restored to sanity in the second step. Was I insane before I got drunk or after I got drunk? I was insane before it was nuts to start drinking. It was nuts to believe that alcohol would improve my sobriety. But I did it anyway and the alcohol restored me to sanity. Once I started to get drunk, I realized the enormity. My mistake. So you know, I've got first hand experience with the obsession of the mind. Listen,

when we tell our loved ones that we're done forever, we mean it. When we tell our boss I will never show up drunk again, ever, we mean it. When we tell the judge, Your honor, I swear you know I'm through. We meet we. And if, if you hook this up to a lie detector, it would say we're telling the truth.

The problem is, is we have a lack of power. We've got lack of choice and we've got lack of control. We don't have it. It's not available. There's some great sections in this book that the talk exactly about that. So I've got a body that's going to ensure I'm going to die drinking because I'm going to poison myself with it every night. And I've got a mind that won't let me stay away from it.

So really the only problem I got is

when I'm drinking or when I'm not drinking. If it wasn't for those two problems, I'd probably be alright. But there's actually a third problem. And the third problem is the unmanageability. I love the way this this book, the big book talks about unmanageability. It's spread throughout the book that, you know, there's not like one chapter on to the unmanageable or something. You have to, you have to kind of, you have to kind of dig to find it. But

basically using big book terminology, here's how unmanageability would present to me because I thought unmanageability was the DUI's, the the family walking out. Those are consequences of being a horse's ass.

OK, that's not the unmanageability of alcoholism. Here's here's a good day separate. Now remind you I want to I want to let you know I'm going to be talking about being separated from alcohol in a sober state in between drinks. On a good day, I'm restless, irritable and discontented. On a normal day, I'm prayed a misery and depression. I, I, I can't control my emotional nature. I suffer from guilt, shame, remorse, self-centered fear, anxiety.

That's like a normal day on a bad day. The hideous 4 horsemen Stampede through my head. Terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Anybody ever been there? Let's see a show of hands. Anybody ever been let the record show all 800 people raised their hand? These tapes are going back to my Home group anyway.

Anyway,

uh, CDs, You just said how old you were by the way.

OK, yeah, right. Anyway, anyway, so little bit on step one. Listen, step one is a bear guys, we all minimize. If, if we truly understood the enormity of, of, of what alcoholism can do to us, we would be so much better at prayer and meditation. We did. We would be working with people, you know, we would be doing spot check inventories and semi annual house cleanings. I mean, we'd be all over

this, but inherent in the illness is an almost utter inability to accurately assess just how much trouble we're in. So we got to watch out for that too. That's why we need to be held accountable to by sponsors and, and spiritual advisors and home Home group fellowship and stuff like that, because this is a, this is a big problem. And you know, this this weekend, Carrie and I and some of the other speakers are going to be going to be talking about not just the problem, but but the solution.

Because I got to tell you these, this failed proctologist and New York State stock shyster came up with something absolutely marvelous, absolutely marvelous. And we're going to be sharing some of that this weekend. Kerry. Hi, I'm Carrie, an alcoholic.

Ah, so you know, I think about Chris covered a lot when it came to step one and we really wanted to do and what I think is really important when you do these big book workshops and you're going to be listening to us all weekend. And part of it is to kind of identify and, you know, you kind of have to like us. You have to want what we have. So you have to get to know who we are.

And I was thinking about all the years that, umm, that I spent a, a drinking,

I'm one of those products of like, you know, I mean, like I, I got sober at 18. My parents went to Al Anon. I'm going to, I'm going to 105 Irish Catholic children. So you know, that we had some substance abusers preceding me because I'm the youngest. So my parents went to Al Anon. So they like, they learn these things like, you know, there's this, you know, fellowship in this place that, you know, you send your, you know, alcoholic, drug addict daughter and kick her out the house and send her to this church basement and they'll fix her,

you know, centered a treatment, you know, get her shrinks and everything will all be OK. So I spent five years in alcohol exonomous drinking from the age of 13 to the age of 18. And never once did anybody hand me a big book. Never once did anybody say, you know, the solution to your problem is the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, we're in a 12 step fellowship and we don't even work the 12 steps. I mean, that's really funny. Think about that for a minute. You know, I, I, I, I'll be in a, you know, I'll be in an, A, a meeting and I'll, and I'll be sharing about step recovery.

Come up and be like, don't confuse the newcomer. I'm like like they weren't confused when they walked in the door,

so I'm just going to let them die. So I've one. I'm not a very controversial speaker, but people tend to get up and leave when I'm talking because I don't care. I'm going to, I'm going to curse. I'm a foul mouthed little hooligan.

I'm going to tell you what I think and you're not probably going to like it. I probably won't say it in a very ladylike manner because the only thing that's ladylike about me is this dress

because the fact is that this is a deadly disease.

I died in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was dead for two minutes by my own hand while attending a fucking meetings because nobody gave me the solution to my problem, which was a relationship with a higher power and 12 steps to get that. I came into AA meetings and I thought that I needed to make dances, make coffee. I thought that I needed to talk about my problems. I thought that I needed to, you know, have something interesting to share and hang out with my network of people. And, you know, we, you know, decided to go on a caravan to Newark to cop

after meetings pretty regularly actually, who was relapsed. Yes, you know, you know, Bloomfield Young Peoples, which is where I got sober and drank a lot.

It was like kind of the thing it's like, well, is that half the Home group relaxed in this week? I guess so because they're all down in Newark. So that's, you know, that's the kind of recovery that I was introduced to. And we wondered, you know, and I think about it and I think about the fact that, you know, that this type of recovery that we're going to be talking about this weekend and this type of recovery, this is recovery. And I am actually a treatment professional by the way,

but I actually, you know, present a solution, you know, not fluffy. Let's talk about your inner child and take a bath and a, you know, and let's whine about mom and dad. And I'm like, no, you're your problem. You know, God is your solution. Let's get about that. But anyway,

I know, I know, you know, I know. Yeah, I get paid the big bucks for telling people, you know, to go to a A and read a big book. Actually, you know, I could just say that I could just like the 12 steps are here. Read this. Don't want anybody read your big book, including me. Get a sponsor, get a Home group,

Bye. I'm done for the weekend. Because there's really nothing more that needs to be said. But you know what? Part of part of what? Coming to Fellowship the Spirit and doing these kinds of workshops and doing big book workshops, and it's about a sense of community. When I first got introduced to the 12 Steps, I was living in Staten Island. I had been spent. As I told you, I'd spent five years in Alcohol Anonymous, drinking, dying, committing suicide. I think I had six suicide attempts, one actual death,

several internments in psych wards. Yes, four point restraints were one of my favorite things

because I learned that if you threw yourself on the floor and said daddy don't hit me anymore, they shot you up with drugs. But the problem was that we tie you down. It was a cost benefit analysis.

I was OK with it, you know, So, you know, I spent years around here doing things like that. You know, I would like, I used to think like the most, like the most sober person in the room was like person like with the coolest problem in an open discussion meeting. I almost called it open. Disgusting. I know I'm bad. I'm bigoted,

but I used to think that that was like the most, the most sober person in the room. So like I would like watch like soap operas because like, you know, I was forever expelled or suspended from school and I would watch the soap operas and like make up problems to come to the meeting and share that night about whatever it was. So like I came to Alcohol Anonymous and made-up problems because I didn't know what my problem was. Just like Chris was talking about. I didn't know why I kept drinking. I don't know why. I didn't know why my parents would drop me off at the front door of a church with a dollar and I would sneak out the back and get drunk. I don't know why when you know,

and I said, you know, I really want to stop this. I really don't want to drink anymore. I mean, I remember I was 16 years old and, you know, I had spent a year semi separated from alcohol. And what I mean by that is like my parents decided to move me into the Pennsylvania actually where I live now, which is kind of funny. They kind of thought, well, like they should Get Me Out of New Jersey and send me to the woods in Pennsylvania. And like, you know, that there was the kids or the people I was hanging out with that had something to do with my, you know, my aberrant behavior, such as throwing up on their

and stealing from them and things like that. I mean, you know, must have been my friends, right? They were doing those. So my parents sent me to to the Poconos and said, you know, it was difficult to have access to what I needed to have access to because, you know, I didn't have a car. I was underage. It was difficult to find dirty old men to buy me booze, you know, So I managed to like have some periods of like, you know, not drinking, you know, I was miserably depressed, slept 14 hours a day and, you know,

attempted suicide twice that year. But I managed to do really well in school, surprisingly. I had this brain like if I wasn't drunk, I was actually smart. So I managed to get into a very prestigious prep school at the end of that year. They expelled me from the school that I was in. By the way, I had been have been expelled from 5 high schools, including the special kids school. I was on the short bus and they told me not to come anymore.

They were like in it really, despite the kid with the kids, the school with the kids, with the behavioral problems, like the fire setters and stuff didn't want me. They were like, you know, you could just stop coming now. Don't come back. But anyway, I managed to get into this prestigious prep school and I remember like, I just was like, you know, I had this opportunity to start over. Nobody has to know that I'm an alcoholic. Nobody has to know that I've been in 37 rehabs. Nobody has to know that I'm crazy. Nobody has to know any of these things.

Like, I can start over and I could just be whoever I want to be, Right. So, you know, you ever do that? Ever pretend to be somebody else who you want people to see you as, you know, And you kind of put up this front, but deep down inside, you know, you're not this person. And you have that terror of being found out. And the cracks start to show. And people start to see that, you know, what you're presenting to the world isn't really necessarily what you are. You ever do that? Yeah. So that started to happen

and I was walking home from school one day and someone came up to me and said

my drink. I said sure.

I hadn't had a drink in six months. I had an opportunity, a great opportunity. My entire family was incredibly proud of me and a complete opportunity to start over and be somebody else. And I couldn't do it because the power to do that was not within me.

And I remember drinking

and I remember having that drink and I remember thinking, fuck

everything. I just worked for everything I just did. You know, in the big book it talks about, you know, the alcoholic building up this life for the loved ones of the family, right? And then we, we rip it to Sunder with a senseless series of sprees. So put that alcohol in my body and I knew, I absolutely knew. I knew I couldn't drink.

I knew I couldn't live without drinking. I knew that AAA didn't work because I had been coming there now for three years and couldn't not drink. So I ate the medicine cabinet and died.

Woke up five days later really pissed and intubated because like now, God didn't even want me. A A can't sober me up. My parents can't fix me. Rehab doesn't work. You know, I can't pretend to be somebody else

and I have nowhere to go. And I was in that state for two years, in and out of the rooms, in and out, in and out. And not one person said to me,

why don't you read this book?

We have a solution.

You want to hide something from an alcoholic? Put it in the damn big book.

But I mean, my point to this is as we come to things like this, to weekends like this, you know, not necessarily to get information on how to work the steps because that's what a sponsor is for. You know, if you're getting your sponsorship from this table, that's not sponsorship. This is inspiration. We're going to talk about our experience with the steps. We're going to talk about the things that we've done, the things that we we've been shown through this process and hopefully

inspire you to have your own experience.

But this isn't sponsorship. Sponsorship is sitting down at your kitchen table, eyeball to eyeball with another human being and going through this big book word by word, paragraph by paragraph. That is sponsorship. Now, if it wasn't for weekends like this, if it wasn't for speaker tapes, because I'm not old too, you know, if it wasn't for guys like Joe and Charlie, I wouldn't be sitting in this chair

because I know I wouldn't have been able to gain access to the information that told me where the solution to my problem was.

Actually, they told me what my problem was first and then told me where the solution of my problem was. You know, because alcohol, as an alcoholic, I externalize everything. You ever you ever like have one of those days and it was everybody elses fault put yours, you know, like you know, it was traffic. Your boss sucks. You know your husband sucks, the kids suck. You know everything sucks, right? The common denominator in that situation is me. But I externalize and blame everything on everybody else. My belief really was, is that I, my alcoholism was causal.

I understood that I was powerless. I understood that I was screwed. I mean, I wouldn't have eaten the medicine cabinet and actually died if I thought that there was any hope for my, for my life. I mean, at 16 years old, I had no hope. I remember I had a bullet. I actually showed it to my, my now husband when we met. And I was like, well, you know, you realize that if I don't stop drinking by the time I'm 21, I'm going to kill myself. So, you know, you got a couple years with me. But last time I ate the medicine cabinet, that didn't work. So I think this time I'm going to use a gun.

That was a conversation we had, unlike our second date.

What's really strange is he didn't run. That was a warning sign. But anyway, that's a whole other story. That's called SAX inventory.

But I have a point to this.

And my point is, is this is that for me, I really believe that I drank because of things that other people did to me. I thought I drank because I grew up in an alcoholic household. I thought I drank because, you know, you know, I wasn't loved appropriately by my parents because, you know, I decide how they should love me and they should execute it accordingly to my standards. And if you fail to do so, then I'm not loved.

I thought that I, I, I was a paste eater. OK, I've never been a cool kid.

I'm still not a cool kid. You know I went to, I spoke at Icky Pie like 2 weeks ago. I was like 4000 people and it was awesome. And like I was the paste eater in the corner,

you know, and I'm like, I'm like the main speaker and I'm the pace eater in the corner. And they're like, aren't you the speaker? And they're like, I'm like, yeah, they're like you were great. I'm like in the corner, you know, because I've never been one of those people. Like I've always been somebody. I've always felt shy, inadequate, full of fear. Not in sobriety. I mean, I've, I've 18 years of sobriety and I've, I have, you know, 16 years of consistently working the steps. I mean, I can sit in a table in front of you guys and I can talk about some of the most intimate things in my life.

I could talk about God. I could talk about alcoholism. I could talk about the big book. I can pre I can be a channel, an agent of God's will. But you know, you catch me in the corner and, and, and I'm like looking at the floor and, you know, and you know, counting ceiling tiles because I'm not the most, you know, outgoing person. I'm actually rather shy.

With that being said, you know, I, I went through my life and I really believed that what was wrong with me had to do with you.

That what was wrong with me was that, you know, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't liked. I wasn't loved. That I wasn't pretty enough, that my boobs were not big enough, that I didn't have the right boyfriend. I didn't have the right family. I didn't come for the right socioeconomic status bracket.

And that if I could fix those things on the outside that I would be OK, you know, And if I was OK inside, then I wouldn't need to drink, right? You know what that's called? It's called polishing the brass and the Titanic.

But I really believe that. And what this book taught me, what the first step taught me was that the problem has absolutely nothing to do with you, has nothing to do with whether or not my boobs are big enough. It has nothing to do about what kind of money I have in the bank or what kind of job that I have. And it has everything to do with that engine of my disease, my spiritual malady. Because the fact is that the drink, you know, they talk about the desperate experiment of the first drink right now, the desperate experiment. I mean, that's the most perfect description of picking

the first drink, right? Because one, I don't really know what's going to happen after the first one, except for the 2nd

and 3rd and 4th and you know, then maybe the bottle and you know, the gallon.

But desperate? That's the word we miss a lot, isn't it? The desperation of the untreated alcoholic Who here is blotted out the intolerableness of your situation with something other than booze, food, men, money, prestige, ego.

Yeah, exactly. Because when, when I'm in that state of untreated alcoholism, I'm going to fill that hole with anything that I can grab onto at first. And this is The thing is like when you come to Alcohol Anonymous and they say, you know, the first drink gets you drunk. You know, I have to try a bunch of different stuff before I go back to the bottle because I got burned by the bottle. You know, the bottle kicked my ass. I'm not going back to the bottle first thing out, right. I'm going to change the boyfriend,

you know, I get a better boyfriend, you know, with a better car, with a little bit more money and, you know, maybe, you know, maybe I'm going to feel a little better about myself. And then I'm going to get the haircut, you know, you get the haircut and the highlights and the nails done because you're trying to fix up the outside because the inside feels like shit, you know?

So I start with that. I start externalizing,

you know, and then slowly but surely, those things don't work. They're called human powers. I love Bill Story and I love Bill Story the 1st 8 pages of Bill Story because it has the coolest thing ever.

Build details every single human power he used to to not just, you know, not just stop. I mean, I could drink and put the bottle down, but stay away from the bottle. Staying stopped is a problem for the alcoholic, not the stopping. Bill details every single way that he used every human power that he used to stay stopped. You know, in the book it talks about, it says we're as hopeless as Bill, you know, meaning a hopeless alcoholic like Bill.

And what the book is talking about is did all the human powers that failed Bill, did they fail for me? Me too.

And the human powers that fail. Bill. I mean, he swore on the Bible, right? He wrote sweet promises to Lois. He used ego, pride. He could laugh at the gin mills, right? Geographical cure, right? He went. He went to Toronto. He went from country and back again, right? He tried. He tried. What else did he try? Oh, swaying before the medicine cabinet. Suicide. Right. Jumping out the window. Sedatives, which are my favorites. Sedatives and booze. Yeah, that's a great combination. Lancher on the rocks,

he used fear, hospitalization, self knowledge. And I'm sure there's more in there because I'm just going off the top of my head. But the idea here is all of those human powers fail Bill, and all of those human powers failed me. So when I read through the 1st 8 pages of that chapter and I look at all the ways that Bill tried to control his drinking or stay stopped and none of those things worked for Bill. None of those things worked for me.

The real question is what is it that I need to do

in order to maintain abstinence from alcohol?

Well, Bill tells us in his story, he says that it's a relationship with his higher power. He talks about faith without works is dead. He talks about service. He said that that that working with another alcoholic helped in rough going. He talks about common sense becomes uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt. I think we call that meditation.

I think you know. So the idea here is that first I have to stop externalizing my problem and realize the problem has to do with me. It has to do with my perceptions, my life, the way that I perceive the world,

that the engine of my disease, the reason why the drink looks like a good idea, why I make that desperate experiment of the first drink, is because I'm ruled by self-centered fear.

That self-centered fear creates the things that Chris was talking about. But the problems with personal relationships can control my emotional nature. Pray to misery and depression. Can't make a living, can't seem to be a real help to other people, full of fear, feelings of uselessness. Right?

Page 52 The bedevilments. Yet my sponsor didn't make me write that stuff out like 3 * a year for like the past. I don't know, 19 years that I actually haven't memorized. But the idea here is that though that self-centered fear is the thing that creates that state within myself that makes the drink look like a good idea, that I seek the relief of the first drink. And I drink because I like the effect that it produces.

And though

I see other people drinking with impunity, right? That's the other thing is the alcoholic mind. The alcoholic mind watches alcohol. You know, I don't watch alcohol anymore. I don't. The only time I pay attention to alcohol is when I'm out with non with with people who drink

and I'm at a dinner and I just pay attention to make sure I don't pick up their glass. But essentially I don't watch alcohol. It's inert substance to me