Step 1 at the Fellowship of the Spirit convention in Queens, NY

My name is Peter and recovered alcoholic. Hi Peter and again I'm grateful to be alive and sober and part of a sacred place called Alcoholics Anonymous to thank Mick for his his lead and good to see so many friends here

loving God separating me from alcohol in June 23rd, 1988 and I'm a recovered alcoholic and I say recovered because I am anything less than that would be falsely humble. And I hope and part of this this weekend we get to talk about experientially what it's like living in the world of the spirit experientially what it's like feeling like a recovered alcoholic and the blessings that come with the relationship with this power call God the great factor. Nothing less than that great fact. Mick was talking about how

God kind of blessed this fellowship of the Spirit, where we get to experience the spirit of the fellowship and how God coordinates and arranges all of those things. When the intent is pure and it's His will, great things happen.

To kind of piggyback off of that, how God will bless us when we think He isn't, and how God can hear the Spirit and hear the soul, My soul, when it hurts. I just want to share a quick story and it's a fresh one too because it just happened a few weeks ago. Mary and I were headed to a conference to speak at in Sweden just a few weeks ago.

And we left Fort Lauderdale and we got to the infamous Newark Airport where rude is the word of the day. And,

and we went from one gate to the next. And we're waiting in this international pot. And they wouldn't let us in because some of the paperwork was mixed up. And they did. They didn't just say you have the wrong paperwork. They ridiculed me for having the wrong paperwork. And I told Mary and welcome to New Jersey. I mean, this is how it goes. And,

and within 20 minutes, it was what I would call a hostile environment. And I'm looking around. We're looking around for a, a folks, just something to lock into. And there was a lot of fear. I start to experience and some uncertainty. Why am I going to Europe to speak? I should just go back to Florida. And why do I go through this airport when I know when I'm in for all the time? And I was feeling really uneasy. The air conditioning this tournament was broken. It was hot. The, the people didn't know what line

to go to and I felt like a lost puppy in Jersey

and I was feeling very, very uncomfortable. And the mind started to talk. The mind started to talk on don't do this. You don't need to go speak. You should go home. And it went on and on and on. And I was shooting all over myself.

And so I looked at Mary and she was feeling the same way. And we looked at each other and said, let's pray. So right in the middle of the terminal, we held hands, we closed our eyes and we said prayer. And Marion recited something from Scripture

and when we opened up our eyes, there was a woman standing there and she said to us, I love seeing. So nice to see people praying in public.

And so that led to a little bit of a conversation and a little bit longer, a little bit longer. And I would say about 20 minutes. We were talking to this woman and most of her families in AA. They she talked about Alan on she was going back to Stockholm to see her dying dad and she was a missionary and she believed in the in the Carpenter like I did. And she said to us, my favorite piece of scripture is this is what we just finished praying.

And she said, you know, I had this bangle at home and something told me to take it today, so I want to give it to you. And on this little bangle was that piece of scripture.

And so as we talk, so more I got centered, I got my GPS back. I was in Peterson that I became God centered. And suddenly all the noise around me, all the uncertainty and skepticism in my head seemed to be grinded into dust. And I was back. And it came to me the realization I go on an invitation. My life is one of invitation. I'm carrying a message God gave me through Alcoholics Anonymous

and off I go to talk to some more of His kids

and settling the complexion of the whole moment. The the moment in the afternoon changed and we got back on that plane and we had a great flight. This woman told us where she was sitting. We were related after speaking to this woman, it was just ease and comfort and she told us where she was sitting. Says when the plane gets up there, we'll chat. So around 10,000 feet the bell goes off and you can kind of get out of your seat. And so Marion went back and she couldn't find this woman.

And we looked around some more and she looks around some more and when we deplaned, this woman disappeared.

We looked up what Hanne means and it means God is gracious.

So she was in all life. I don't know if she was on that plane we really couldn't find or was she sent by someone? Because for about 20 minutes or half hour, she completely changed our day and actually my approach towards that conference. And I fell asleep on the plane and in my dream something came to me like I sent a gift to you. And when I came to, I realized what that was.

So we can take this home and say, oh, it's just a coincidence. And perhaps it was,

or it could have been something else. And what I've learned since I've gotten sober by making lots of mistakes and crying, literally crying on my knees to this power call God, that He hears our heart and He reads the soul when it needs to be held and put back together like He's been doing for me and countless others. And what we really are about an Alcoholics Anonymous is driving people back to that power call God.

However, however we're going to go up this mountain, however we're going to ride up this mountain, we're going to this same God.

Another quick story I'd like to just share with you. I, I'm, I'm sober a while and I'm praying to God, my conception of the, of, of my God. And I'm praying and meditating 3 * a year for the longest time. And I'm reworking the steps and I believe a really, really good connection with this power call God and my personal God, the Carpenter. And Mick starts taking me through the work and we get to step four and I share with him in my inventory about a lot of the contempt I have for my church.

Well, the some Catholicism, some of the things we've all read in the paper, and some other things that I shared with him about. And he listened and he gave me some feedback

as God would coordinate the whole thing perfectly.

And Mick said something to me and it went like this. He said you go to AAA meetings. I said, yeah, he's every a meeting, a healthy meeting. I said no, are some sick? Some. Well, yeah. Does everyone do exactly what you want? I said no, you got 13 step. As I says, yeah, he's. But you keep going back. Yeah. And you keep bringing a solution and you keep loving it. I said, yeah, he's. How come you can't do that for your church? I had no answer

and hate when I have no comeback from my sponsor.

I was going to drop them about them.

So part of my assignment was to go back and I knew I had to make amends. And I went to confession on a Saturday night and I sat with with the priest and I told him what was going on with me and I said I, I owe an amends. And what he said to me. And it was exactly well along the lines with Mick said, can you come to church tomorrow to Mass as I can do that, of course. And I knew that was part of my assignment. And I walk into Mass and Marion took me because I, I was uneasy. I would go into my

like candles for years, but the sitting Mass was a little different. I would go and take inventory and when I walked in as the church bells were going, I began to weep. In fact, I called Mickey right after Mass. It was the most incredible experience. I weep for an hour and I went back again on another Sunday and I went back on the following Sunday, went back on the following Sunday and Sunday morning at 10:30 Mass, it's my most favorite place on the planet to be. I get fed

well, I keep going with no expectations and following and I'm into different books and I want to learn, I want to know more. I want to experience more of my God. And So what my God did for me was allow me to read at Mass and become a lector and serve communion on Sunday mornings beyond my wildest dreams. And I, I love being there. And it was a time where I had some contempt for that as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And So what what God does is feed us as he has to feed us and puts teachers in our life to feed us what?

Because sometimes we think we're awake and we're sound asleep. And what I hope we can do this weekend is kind of get the Jaws of Life and pry U.S. Open a little bit.

Awareness is the greatest agent for change. And if I think I have all the answers, I'm really sound asleep. How do I expect some chat? How do I treat the challenges that my sponsor gives me,

even though it might make us uncomfortable? Do they take direction? Am I still willing to go to any lens with 15 or 20 or 25 years? Am I still seeking this power call God with the desperate for drowning man or woman with 15 or 20 or 30 years? Or do I sit back and rest on my laurels until the newcomers what to do while I haven't cracked open a book in 10 years? How free do we want to be

if we're sitting in an AAA meeting tonight? It's a workshop, but is an A a meeting to some sorts? And if we're sitting here tonight at Winox Experience Freedom, my question is why? We have big books, we have meetings, we have sponsors, we have the sacred three sides of our triangle. Why are we in bondage? And to who? Ourself and the thinking mind, which is the greatest predator in the world.

And if we're experiencing some freedom tonight, do we want to get freer? How much God do we want to expense? I love the effect produced by booze.

I love the experience I have with God

and the less self of me, the death of self, a successful living, the less self of me that's around. I get to experience more of God, but my ego wants to fight that. So we need sponsors to kind of navigate us through that. And the best formula I have found is the 12 steps in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous to continually rework that experience. The death of self, enter the world that a spirit and get poured back into one through 9 into 1011 and 12. I mean this. The two stories I just shared were the words don't do them justice

had with Mickey and the experience at the airport. God fed me.

I have a whole life of service. What I do privately and what I do for work. My whole life is service. I'm Constance the way God has made me feed and every once in a while God knows I hunger and feeds me. It could be through the direction of a sponsor or it just can be walking into a church. You can be going on a trip to go speak and I get fed. I got fed. Going to feed others, if you will.

It wasn't like that for me when I got drunk. When I got drunk when I was 14, I was searching for something. You feed me

empty now. Those weren't the words I was thinking. I couldn't articulate that. But I was missing. I was missing something. And it took a whole bunch of years to completely bottom out when there was nothing left of me but desperation. And then God scooped me up and put me in my 7th and last treatment center when I got drunk at 14. My plan wasn't to wind up in seven treatment centers or be homeless

and experience daily humiliation and degradation at the hands of a a bottle of booze.

And what's worse is when you took the booze away. I quickly found out. I remember this. After my fifth treatment center, you removed the booze away from me. Mickey, talk about this. I'm just as sick. In fact, I might be more dangerous. We're going to talk about that a little bit. The second-half of the first step, the unmanageability, the current unmanageability. I become a better thief, a better liar or better cheap and I'm going to hurt people. I infect people without this power call God

and I was searching abusive relationships, bad relationships with my family and I kept returning back to that which is killing me. And if I wasn't drinking, I was on a sex break or food spree or money was on some spree. And the spree many of us experienced here while we're sober to thinking, spinning spree because, you know, we love to think.

We're always thinking. Half of this room is thinking. Who invited these two here?

We like to think I tell new people when you go to an old time and ask them a question and the old time, he says, let me think about it. Get back to you. Just run to the next day. You don't. Yeah,

because they're thinking. Well, we're figuring something out because they're not thinking I need to play God somewhere.

Delusions are grandeur. I am a lowlife, whatever it is. But I'm thinking. I love to think. I got to think. Well, you know, we've got to create drama. We love drama. In my thinking, I love drama. No, I really do. I love drama. Take it from serious

and if I don't have drama, I know you got drama or we'll invent drama. And you know what the mind does, how it how it gets into this is I want to ask how Joe's doing. I haven't seen him around a while and I pretend I'm really carrying concerning about Joe. I don't care about Joe. I just want to gossip about somebody. And then you do the same and we have these two masks on. Like we're real spiritual people caring about Joe. We just don't want to discuss our own demons. So let's pick on him. And this is how a lot of us navigate in alcohol

and get 30 year chips.

What am I like when I'm all alone on my couch and no one's around or I'm in my car driving, stuck in traffic? How am I doing? How am I doing?

What's that my mind telling me? I didn't drink today but it's OK to do these other things? Do I practice? Here's a consideration. Do I practice fidelity to my God, or do I have other lovers besides God, like the sex and the food and the gambling or whatever it might be? Do I practice fidelity in my own relationship? Do I practice fidelity? What's that look like?

I got into my first treatment center. I was,

I didn't think I was an alcoholic. I went into my first treatments and because I got caught stealing from my dad, I was stealing his checkbooks, checks from his checkbook. And I really justified that inappropriate behavior. My dad had lots of money. I figured he had really a lot of money. He was doing well at the time. What's the big deal if I took a couple of checks? He's cheap to me anyway, I deserve this money and I was desperate. So I forced his name and I go get these checks cashed. And I did that for a little while. I thought I hit lottery because I can

liquor. God forbid I should go look for a job.

And then he got these, all these, these checks back in a checking statement. I didn't know those things existed. And then he went looking for me and I went to my first treatment sent and I didn't concede to my innermost self. I will tell you this, my fifth treatment center, which I was put away for 9 weeks. And at the time that was a long time to go to treatment. I came up in the 28 day models. But even after my fifth treatment center, when I conceded to my innermost self, I knew I was a drunk,

and I knew I was headed for worse trouble than I already experienced. Even with that kind of knowledge and a desire to stop on my way into my fifth treatment center, two days later, I was junk. After discharge, after nine weeks, knowing I'm alcoholic, having a powerful desire to stop drinking because I knew was hurting me, I was discharged on a Saturday and drunk on a Monday.

So even knowledge of this, our book tells us knowledge will not work. And it certainly won't work in a strange mental blank spot.

And having a powerful desire to stop drinking, my book tells, is absolutely no avail. I experience all of that.

So when I picked up this book with the sponsor and they began walking me through and I saw these words and he shared his experience. Yeah, I get that based experientially. I lived this life. I lived 2 lives in one lifetime.

So 1988 shows up and I'm homeless. I'm living in the streets in New York. I weigh about 60 lbs less than I weigh right now. I was urinating blood, I had black eyes, my gums bled. I had to know. Last time I bathed or ate good food, solid food. My my my diet was if I can boost a couple of Twinkies and get some liquor. I mean that was it. No money gets spent on food.

Any money gets spent on BlackBerry Brandy. This is what we do. I remember coming to out of a hallway

and maybe five or six in the morning sometimes and I would see these people at the bus stop going to work, all freshly showered suits on the attache case and woman looking really nice catching the bus to go to work or going down to the train station. And I secretly despised every one of them because I wanted so much to be like them, and I knew alcohol was my master and I wished myself dead.

And then one time in Staten Island, I was living in a fleabag motel, and I made an attempt

to take my own life. I ate a bunch of Valium and washed them down. And I I wasn't elated and I wasn't, I didn't think I was depressed. There was almost a relief. This ends now.

I had the realization that I've ruined my life. I can't leave the drink alone. I've been to treatment, I've had priests on my, I've had shrinks on me. I can't. I'm going to die just like my mom, dad. And I had the realization that I'm killing my family too. Just let's wash the night away and I don't come to anymore. And that's it.

The courage to do battle wasn't there. And God interrupts my death again. And 1980, I got placed through a series of circumstances when God connects the dots for us, when we don't know how God connected the dots and placed me in treatment center number 7. And I'm here with you tonight to share about that, to share about the good news that our book offers us, to share about the great fact that our book promises us that we go from where we were to what

became an experience of sunlight, of the Spirit. And I've been made. It's been made very clear to me. I don't. If I'm sober, God willing, for the rest of my life, I will always be broken. There's a great quote from a book. I'm weak flesh, born into the slavery of sin. I'm broken. I can't fix me. It's only with his hand that I'll get fixed on his terms, in his way. But going into each day, I'm broken and my brokenness is right in my mind.

You can give me Shangri-La and I'll critique it.

I can hit Powerball tonight and say not everyone wants my money. I mean, it's just something wrong. I just look at things a little different now when I'm in the sunlight of the Spirit, when I'm experienced that God, I don't even need to tell you that.

It's just the way we walk that you know that. And some of my experiences with this gothing, it's not always, it's not always elation, euphoria. It's just as rightness or this okayness

that no matter what's coming at us because life is problematic, just deep down within, I don't know how I have a spot to have a support group. I have my. I'm going to somehow navigate through this and there's just an okayness about it.

This process of recovery I have found.

Is a forward journey backwards. We go 2 the steps numerically one to four to five and so on, and we 10:11 and 12:00. But what I have found for me, it's a process of going home. It's a forward journey backwards to what God created with the Oxford Group. Talked about purely honesty and selfishness and love. I wasn't like that in 1988. Some days I'm still not like that. But overall, I think God's done a decent job with all of us in our attempt to seek Him.

So the forward journey backwards, back to that place, we go home and it's only to the removal of self, the depth of self that we get to experience this God. I can have nothing in between me and God. Sometimes I sit with a sponsor, I have this problem, has to go, and sometimes God will just remove it.

And I think God doesn't love me because he's taken the job from he's taken a relation for me. And what he's doing is just bringing me closer to him to experience oneness because the things I think are good for me are killing me. But I don't know that because I'm not that bright. I can't see that far down the road, but he can, God could. And what if he was sought? So

there was a time when I was drinking, I got involved in some non conference approved dry goods for a while.

All the dolphins in the back went, yeah,

the crackheads went like this. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say?

There was a time where I, I'm not putting, exaggerating. I despise my family because they were confronting me on my problem,

not that they were picking on me

a little by slowly God has brought us back together. The other neat thing, what's happened to me as a result of this work, and I really got to thank Mickey for this, is I adore my dad, but I had him larger than life.

How do you live with somebody who's larger than life? You can't

because what I would do is interpret that as no matter what I do, I'm still the mistake. I can't have a relationship. It's not fair to you. It wasn't fair to him. And what I've been able to do over the last couple of years, and as my dad is getting a little older and begging God to show me how to have a relationship with this man as close as we are, is that God has given me the the awareness to see his humanness and come to terms with the mistakes he made bringing me up.

It wasn't Father knows best. There were mistakes, it was ugly, but I got to see his fear. I get to see his fear of his own mortality now his age. I get to see the humanness in him, which has allowed me to love him from a different angle.

And the bribe, The byproduct to that is I'm not writing a lot of inventory on my dad as much as I used to. And I'm that much more comfortable around this guy

because he's in man

like I am, flesh and blood with flaws and brokenness and fears and uncertainty and doubt.

My dad just went into therapy two weeks for the first time.

Made a commitment to do six months in therapy.

This by the way, is a miracle. Yeah, this man doesn't do things like this. He made a little try it at a bunch of years ago. But so the healing that God does that I've gotten to experience only one place the sake of rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I turned 26 a few years ago. My belly button birthday just passed, and

what a good life because there was a time where I didn't think I'd make 30 years old. So getting a little older, a little bit more tight, a little more broken. But I get excited about Alcoholics Anonymous. I get excited about talking my experience in this book and excited talking about God.

And again, it's a tree for me to shed a podium with Mickey this weekend. So that's all I got. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Peter.

So

there's this schedule

and the and the way I read it, we have,

we have basically have about an hour left.

And I thought, and Peter and I discussed it, that it would be nice if if we could go into,

we've talked about we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.

And then there's the second-half of the first step that our lives have become unmanageable.

So

when when we go to a doctor,

the doctor says where does it hurt?

Right. Where does it hurt?

And

here's an answer I would like to offer from my own life. It hurts in my soul. It hurts in my soul.

You know, we owe each other the truth in Alcoholics Anonymous.

When we listen to someone tell a story, their story,

we padded along the way with our own desires. We want that story to be like, like this, like a straight line. And then this happened, and the sun came out and the angels sing. And it's like that.

But I don't have alcohol wasm,

I got alcoholism. So we're going to get it on the table now. I want you to know me and I want you to know what this disease does in my life. And then we're going to look at the second-half of the first step.

At 23 years sober, I laid down to take my life.

This is. I'm not ashamed of this, I'm not happy about it, but I can tell you I got there by being disconnected from sponsorship.

I would confer with my brother Wizards.

I would talk with people who couldn't lay a glove on me.

Do you ever get frightened calling your sponsor?

I do, and I'll tell you why. Because I've given my sponsor permission to be in my soul. I have two I thou relationships. I thou I am submissive to two beings 1 my sponsor and the second one is God. These are the I thou relationships in my life. I was missing that for 15 years in

a a oh, I'd check in with this or that and I'd go through the steps here. Hit and miss.

But what was happening is I'm slowly losing my power and I'm losing my soul. And I ended up on the floor at 23 years sober in an office in a rum part of town,

an office I didn't pay for. And I was on the floor under a telephone that never rang. And my business is going down the pipes and I'm terrified. And I would have told you I'm not that materialistic. I'm not that connected to money. I mean, we don't have money. We didn't have anything.

I would ride to work on a bicycle and I would sit in that office. And then finally one day

I didn't even see it coming.

I, I made wrong spiritual choices. And then one day I couldn't take it anymore. And I got on the floor of that office and, and the sun started to set and I watched. And Maurice at home, she doesn't know what's going on with me.

And I got the telephone above me and I did not call her.

And

I watched the sunset and I got a knife in my pocket. And the question becomes, am I going to take my life now and cut my wrist or am I going to do it 5 minutes from now? And I went through that for four hours,

and I cannot describe to anyone, unless you have been there, what it is like to go to hell.

If we define hell as the absence of God, which I think is a reasonable

definition, I was in hell for four hours.

It's the blackest, most negative spot I ever hit in my life. And I, I, I thought, I'm going to make a big mess on this floor and I don't want to put anybody out.

So I got to get out that door. I got to crawl from where I am and get out that back door. And there was dirt outside that door

so that would absorb the blood.

The reason I'm talking to you about this is because this is not child's play. We are in Alcoholics Anonymous. This is life and death. This is life and death. And I want you to hear me.

The dirt would absorb my blood and I would chicken out and run and I'm gone. And this, this nightmare is going to end.

And after four hours, I could not do it

and I fell asleep

and I woke up the next morning and I saw that telephone and I remembered during when I was going down. I want to share this with you because of the kindness of God

during those days, as I got more and more negative, as I got more and more loss, you know, because for a suicide, a suicide eliminates options. So the world goes from this many options to this few options to this few options, and pretty soon there's only one option.

So I'm down at one option. I'm getting there. And I would say two things to God. I would say God, I can't breathe. I

can't breathe. And I would say also, would you please give me a cookie?

I just wanted something sweet in my life. I just wanted a cookie

from God.

And so I got down on that floor and I fell asleep. Marie still doesn't know where I am. I woke up in the morning and I remembered that I had met this woman in Minneapolis

and she had talked about this guy in Saint Paul who was a humdinger in a A and I needed a humdinger, believe me.

So I called her and I said, can you give me that man's phone number?

And we got to she said, what's going on? And I told her what was going on because now I'm tapped. I got no more lies in me. I got no more bluff in me. There's no more actor left in me. And I told her what was going on. And God bless her heart, she starts breaking out her a literature. She's got two or three books in her lap. She's talking to me and I'm listening and I'm thinking, God, she's got everything I want, but

she's a woman.

Come on. I got Sergeant stripes over here and she's 16 years sober and I'm 23 years sober. I love women, don't get me wrong, but you know what I mean? What's that going? This is going to be some humbling business here, but I asked her to be my sponsor.

She said no, Mickey, I'll just help you and we'll point you over. I said no, I want you to be my sponsor.

And her name is Cookie.

Oh my God, I never saw it coming.

And I said it's interesting. Just watch what you're saying. Watch what song you're whistling or you're humming. It's God talking to, I'm telling you, gives me goosebumps. So what got me in that room was not alcohol. Do you understand what got me on that floor? Is not alcohol

one symptom of our disease?

Is this addictive relationship with alcohol? It doesn't occur in a non alcoholic OK and the average tempered drinker. They do not experience the phenomenon of craving. Only we do

OK. Even the heavy drinker can put it away. What gets me on that floor? If we can turn to page 52,

go in the big book and if you don't have one, I'm going to read them.

One symptom of alcoholism is our inability to drink. OK, we have this addictive relationship. Now, in the book it says

above the bedevilment, which is what I'm going to read. Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does. So there's the attitude going into this. If I've got all the answers, what am I doing painted into this corner?

What am I doing with a knife in my hand?

What am I doing with a bottle of pills or a gun in my hand? And isn't it interesting that our ego cooks right up to the end? You know, we can't drink

because we would lose our sobriety, our packing order. So they drink for the long time sobers a bullet.

We don't want to lose our sobriety. What is wrong with you know, all right, we had that. And what I would invite you to do is tonight I'm going to read these bedevilments and I would like you to just I'm going to pause after each one. And you ask yourself, where are you with this bedevilment tonight,

right, Because what we want to, I got that all worked out because that's when I was drinking. That was when I was drinking. I went to you all to also to notice it doesn't say when drinking and it doesn't say some of us,

right?

The longer we're in this fellowship, the less we're going to talk about how we're really doing because we're royalty now. We got 1015 years we don't want, right? We don't want to tell somebody we are so lonely for just to have a little friendship that we can hardly breathe. We can't tell somebody. I'm 23 years sober and I just lost my job and I can't find another job.

We don't talk to each other about where it hurts.

So here we go. We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view.

We were These are other symptoms of the disease of alcoholism. We were having trouble with personal relationships.

We were having trouble with personal relationships.

Either I'm going to treat people like they're more important than I am, or I'm going to treat people like they're less important than I am. But there are no peers in here because I also hate myself. We got that going for us.

Do you know what I mean? This is a real sickness. This is a real disease. It is a soul sickness

and also and also in the chapter we agnostics, which is what where we are. It also says

when the spiritual maladies overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. So where does the disease of alcoholism live? It lives in my soul, which is why a spiritual program works for me to recover.

So that's why it's hard for me to go into the doctor's office and say, you know, I'm feeling really lousy. Where does it hurt, Mickey? It hurts in my soul.

It hurts in my soul

and I didn't find out incidentally that I really had a soul till I almost took my own life and my soul was killing me.

So ask yourself, are you having trouble with personal relationships? Doesn't matter if you're 17 years sober. Do you or do you not have the disease of alcoholism? Do I or do I not have the disease of alcoholism?

And if you do, odds are you're having problems with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. Doctor Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, without a drink.

I'm going along. It's a great day. The next thing, man, it's stormy weather. What happened? What happened?

I call it a soul storm.

I just get a soul storm. And now, man, I mean, it's like somebody put the light up.

We were a prey to misery and depression.

Isn't it interesting that in our big book, I just read that word, the D word?

Now we go along and we scratch our heads and we say, Oh my God, I can't tell anybody I'm depressed.

Are you alcoholic?

It comes with the party. It's part of the package. You got this disease, you get the Full Monty,

right? We are a prey to misery and depression. What's wrong? I don't know. I don't know what's wrong? How about I'm an alcoholic? Oh, no, that's an excuse. I'm in full control. Really.

I'm not.

We couldn't make a living. Well, sure, I can make a living, we say, and we take great pride. I can make a living. Who gave you the power to make that living? How is it that you can show up for that job? Who made you so articulate that you can answer the telephone or deliver that package or do something useful? If that's not God, I'm telling you I have the places where

at.

Let's see, about 25 years sober, I'd lost everything.

Maria and I lost our home. I was riding a bicycle to paint apartments for 7 bucks an hour and I'd been a six figure man.

An advertising typhoon.

Now I'm paying apartments

and I'm dying. You talk about take your pride to the cleaners, but I got to tell you something.

I got to work in a job. I got to tell you about this.

I'm working in a place where you have to do 10 key. You know what that is? It's all those numbers over here. And I'm I'm going to input credit card transactions for a company that supports a hospital.

And I'm sitting in there with this young guy behind me. We're back-to-back, only two of us in a room and he's like this,

I'm hunting Peck on this ten key. I'm going 1/2,

you know, like this and I'm praying to God. Please don't let me lose this job. I got nothing. I didn't know if I could be an employee,

you know, so and and he and he said this to me. I don't know if this will mean anything to you because it didn't mean anything to me. I hear his voice coming from behind my back, back. And he says, hey, you like Whitesnake? I don't know what he was talking about.

I said sure, and this wall of sound hits me. It's heavy metal. I'm in there 1-2 anyway.

But you taught me that we are to do a day's labor for a day's wage. We are to be a worker among workers. And I tried every day to go in there with my sack lunch and be a worker among workers. And the lady came into our office one day, our supervisor, and she says, men, I'm going to have to let one of you don't go. And I knew that, Mister Magic Fingers. You must have 15 fingers on each hand.

I was magic

and I know he was doing double my work. They let him go and kept me

and I was an employee and I could do that job and every place I worked, and it was always with this 10K thing,

every place I work, they offered me a job and I work my way up from $7.50 an hour to $11.50 an hour.

I was pretty proud of that. I wouldn't have looked at $11.50 with anything but scorn. I made six figure income,

but I worked for that. I worked actually more honestly for that than I did for the money. I did make the big money

and we couldn't make a living. We couldn't make a living. Take it seriously. And then and then God started to add other things and he gave me all these weird jobs to do. And today I paint Russian icons

and I make custom cowboy boots. I may I hear people talk from the podium, they say, and God give me a wildlife beyond my imagination. And I'm a custom cowboy boot making iconographer. That's about as wild as my imaging. Who is this God? That's what I want to know. OK, we're going to go through this. Here we go. We had a feeling of uselessness. I I don't know about that uselessness, but I can tell you I get the feeling of isolation,