The Co-anon meeting at the Cocaine Anonymous world convention in Chicago, IL

Thank you everybody.

So I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself and then I hope to tell you a little bit about my story of having a spiritual connection, finding, finding God through the program of Cocaine Anonymous and 12 Step Fellowship.

I am somewhat prepared, but I know that really, in the end, what it is,

is God speaking through me. And so with that said, I'm going to offer a bit of a prayer here that I wrote down this morning when I first awoke that I think summarizes what I hope for today

and all days when I'm talking with people about recovery.

God,

Creator of me and all I see around me. Sustainer, Destroyer, subdue my will, remove my ego for the time of our talk today,

I ask you, use me, speak through me to carry your message here today and always

be in and around us as we seek a life that makes sense to each of us individually.

Show me how to be in this world. I humbly ask for willingness, courage, and faith.

And with that, that opened my day this morning. And it reminded me that the first thing I need to do each day is to attend to my spiritual condition. And so you know that that was our, that was my opening spiritual condition today. So anyway, so as Marion said, my name is Ed Bartholick. I'm a member of In God's Hands, which is a Conan group that's been in existence for about two years now in Denver, Co.

I've been a member of that group for about a year

and before that I had a chance to work with others in 12 step fellowships. I love these gizmos, so

I count my sobriety date from when I first began studying the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which is April 1st, 2010. Six years 25, six point, 25 years, 75.03 months. It gets better. 2285 days,

54,831 hours. So that's, that's when I counted and before that I was in the Al Anon fellowship. Basically, I started in the Al Anon Fellowship back in about 1993 at the end of a significant relationship for me. And

unlike some other folks that have kind of come and gone, I've I've actually been continuously attending a 12 step meetings for that entire time.

So I don't have an app for that,

you know, 52 weeks in a year, at least one meeting a week, you know, do the math. Anyway, so today I hope to talk to you a little bit about my experience with that. When I talk about my involvement in the 12 step fellowships, I'm talking about other family programs. It's kind of odd, in my time around this convention, everybody is assumed that I'm the addict because I'm hanging out with this room full of women.

And I'll just say that I am an addict of sorts.

My addiction is the people who can give me love and excitement and give me the charge that I love from the ups and downs of somebody who's using a mind altering substance, whether it be drugs, alcohol,

sex, gambling, whatever you you name it, I'm a, I'm a whatever you got kind of addict, you know, you can bring some excitement to me. I'm I'm like, you know, strapping in for the ride. I love it.

So

I was joking with my roommate here that my ambition for today's doc is for you not to leave the room screaming, saying, oh, that was just the worst ever. Some folks in the back here were starting to nod off already. And I thought, well, that's better than walking out. So that's that's not so bad. And you know, that kind of statement tells you a little bit about my personality as well.

I have

a sarcasm that's one of my coping mechanisms in life

and some would say a dry humor to a nonexistent humor. And so as I talk with you today, try try not to let that fool you. I don't know, maybe I belong over in the room with all the folks from the UK and and beyond. You know, I understand they're sort of like that, but

so anyway, so, so that's it. So, you know, I came to the 12 step fellowship of Al Anon actually in about 1993. It was at the end of breaking up of a relationship with a admitted sex addict.

He and I had met and we, you know, hit it off great. There was that magnetic attraction right from the beginning. And so I was, I don't know, 2730 years old in there someplace and, and I had, you know, just all of those great wonderful feelings. And this guy met what I needed all along throughout my life and which was a project, a fixer upper,

somebody that could bring me the social life and the excitement

and the, you know, emotional intensity that I just never felt myself for whatever reason. You know, I've been always a person who's struggling with finding my own emotions, experiencing my own emotions,

creating my own excitement, creating my own social network. So throughout my relationship history and you know, work history and whatnot, I've, I've always turned to others for that.

You know, I was, I was plenty good at a lot of other things. And so my objective was to always be, you know, fed that type of thing from the outside. And of course, that pretty much,

you know, took care of all my needs. It worked until it didn't work, you know, until it crashed and burned. And so this, this gentleman by the name of Mark, you know, at at about the seven-year mark, we had done the counseling, we had done the couples counseling, we had done the individual counseling. We had done the University of Minnesota research groups, you know, where they did everything except scan our brain as to like what part lit up when we were, you know, thinking about this and that. And

it just got to a point where I realized that it wasn't, you know, work. It wasn't working for me. It's like I I'm not going to be able to live with somebody who goes out and

relieves their tension and stresses and that they're coping mechanism is to have anonymous sex with, you know, whoever, wherever. However, that that wasn't working for me, that that wasn't the the thing. And so my first, so, yeah, literally my very first,

first step experience

was at the end of that relationship, he's moving out of the house that we had created together, which of course, being controlling, it was my house that he had moved into. So he's moving out of, you know, my house because I had to have the control of it. So the first step experience with him was I'm sitting on the floor crying.

He and his friends are moving his stuff out.

I have been unable to get what I wanted through this. I'd, you know, been able, unable to through any amount of personal effort on my own. You know, no amount of time, no amount of money, no amount of energy was going to get me what I wanted with this guy. And so sitting there on the floor crying, that was really my first recollection of complete powerlessness over this. You know, here was somebody that I loved that was doing something that was just destroying him

and destroying me and destroying a relationship. And there really was nothing that I could do about it.

And that was essentially my very first first step experience. And then I have to also admit that horrifyingly enough at that point, because I was not in recovery,

the thing that I did when he came up and asked me what's wrong as I'm sitting in a puddle on the floor crying,

I did what I only knew how to do, which is that I lied. You know, I said, oh, nothing. I was thinking about, you know, that trip that we took, I think was to Disneyland, Disney World, something. And, you know, just thinking about that. And it made me sad, you know? So back then it was, I was completely unable to say

what I now think, which is

how can you even ask me what's wrong?

You're, you know, leaving a relationship. You're crushing all of my dreams. You, you, you. It was all about him and what he was doing to me, all about him and what he was unable to do for himself through at the time, what I thought was, you know, lack of lack of willingness, lack of willpower,

lack of anything. And, and

so that was that was my first first step experience. And after that, a friend of mine who I'm really no longer in touch was said, well, why don't you come to this group? It might help you out. And so he took me to this Thursday noontime Al Anon group. And that's how I got started. And I was in that group for the whole time that I lived in Minneapolis, which was about, I don't know, 17 or 20 years or so.

And the

power of that transformation is incremental. I wish I could say that my experience is, is that I got in to the rooms I identified completely. I knew exactly

of the direction that I wanted to be walking in that I, you know, got a sponsor straight away. I studied the information. I took it into my heart. I changed my actions.

Not really

my my MO for that time that I was in Al Anon was to do just enough of the program to get just the incremental relief that I needed in order to solve the pain that I happened to be in at that point in time.

So I've got and you can certainly chat with me later about this. So I've got experience with the self sponsorship route. I've got experience with the no sponsorship path. I've got experience with the We'll assign you a sponsorship during the course of this workshop path

and and now since 2010, I've got experience with the You are my sponsor. My sponsor knows that I am a sponsee of them

and I have a point of accountability and I've got assignments and I've got a direction that I want to go in. So the first number of years I was sort of in the half measures row, you know, doing, doing just enough to get the relief that I wanted,

not knowing what I wanted and just enough of the relief to sort of bridge me over to the next crisis.

So Fast forward a number of years. Of course,

it's the why is this happening to me again?

So, you know, why am I ending another failed relationship? Why am I, you know, unhappy with getting what I thought that I wanted and it turns out not at all what I needed. You know, why is there still this unhappiness within me? Why, why, why? So I had a number of relationships that I'll Fast forward through to the

most recent one, which is

I was in a relationship with a gentleman who ended up completing suicide.

And that was, I have to even look back now, 2008.

So it was at the end of when Andre committed suicide that I moved to Denver. And I basically said to myself,

there's nobody here in the 12 step fellowship that knows me. I can pretend like I'm a complete beginner.

I don't have a facade of experience to hold up to anybody, which is part of what was inhibiting me from actually doing the program in in the Home group that I had in Minneapolis is, is that I had all of that, you know, outside stuff that was blocking me from what I needed from the inside.

And then the other thing that's very profound to me so that, you know, that's a that's a very much of A of a conscious thought that I had. And the other thing was,

well, yet another first step experience. I didn't know that it was a first step experience, but it's just like, OK, well I guess I'm beat.

If I'm going to do this thing, I should follow the instructions. I should do what they tell me to do. I should get a sponsor. And that's about all I knew. It's like, OK, you know, I've been hearing about the sponsorship thing for 20 some odd years. Maybe it's time to give that a try.

And so I finally had the humility and the courage and the willingness to ask Marion actually to be my sponsor. And

that that's where my real work began. I I think that the work of the, the, the work we began studying the big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. We did that universal text. It was the very first time I'd had any experience with the big Book. Suddenly, everything that

I had been hearing really began to make sense in my mind, really began to make intellectual sense to me. Before it was all a lot of

sort of incomplete questions and incomplete answers and the I, I, I will say, you know, so I've got the experience with plenty of conference approved literature from various places and then also just reading us straight from the text of the big book of alcoholic synonymous. And so I really love the fact that our Conan program uses that as as part of its basic text and that we accept the fact that even though it may not speak directly to

the words in the world, as we think about it, it's got lots of valuable stuff in there for us. And so I sort of would graph for you my spiritual experience in this sort of way. How can I do this here? So,

you know, we have time. I'm going to call this age

and this thing moves as you write in. And

let's just say, you know, I start here. I'm born. I'm 10 years old. I'm 20 years old. I'm 30 years old.

That's frightening.

All right, So, you know, here I am at 50. It keeps on going, OK. So fortunately people in my life are very long lived in my family. Hopefully

I'll get it by the end. OK, So what I'm going to illustrate for you here is what I think of as

part of what blocked me from my spiritual experience and part of the solution that I have found here. So

we're going to call this blue line intellect

or intelligence. I didn't attend the entire year they taught spelling, so I apologize if that's wrong. So my interlacked I, I start off, you know, with a few neurons here and you know, I shoot up to a pretty high intellect here by like maybe about age 10 through my development as a young person. And then they keep on teaching me more and more and more. And of course,

unfortunately, I'm right about here and we know that it does that.

So my intellect became very strong. And of course, I'm all about the world of reason. I'm all about scientific reason. I love the part in the big book that talks about the, you know, is, is, isn't it really just a matter of intellect? Can't I solve all the problems in my life by thinking through them, by analyzing them, by saying, Oh, well, no, obviously I would want to pick, you know, choice A over choice B, and that I always have the will and the power and the,

you know, resources

to pick the right choice.

So that's the intellectual path. And then this was my journey on what I call the spiritual path

represented in red

is this has been just my my impression of it.

So I start off absolutely connected to the Spirit, to the source that creates me and brings me into the world.

And

I'm pretty much on a level with that until I get into my teenage years and it absolutely plummets. And then I know everything that there is to know about everything.

I am the master of my universe and I know how to do everything and I can do it on my own, thank you very much. I am just fine. I can do it on my own. And I was saying about that this morning. And, and, and so obviously of my spiritual connection is plummeting and my intellectual connection is soaring,

not good things are going to happen,

right. So I'm, you know, I'm achieving

relationships, I'm achieving money, I'm achieving all of those sorts of things, but my level of happiness is plummeting, my level of.

Self knowledge is plummeting. My ability to connect to other people and to be of any real usefulness to others is plummeting. And I think that of course that following the blue line is going to get me what I want.

Turns out years later that I've learned that maybe following the red line, the spiritual line is a little bit better. And so for me, what happened is, you know, I crossed over. I'm below where you could even be. And for some period of time here, you know, I am like doing the self sponsorship route and I'm sort of like this, you know, I'm like, oh, little spiritual stuff. And then I begin my studying of the Big Book and my

spiritual experience absolutely takes off.

And we'll just put it off the edge of the top of the world there because there's no bounds to it, as we find out in the steps. And so part of what I've done to keep the spiritual experience going for myself here is the idea of the daily perm meditation and the steps.

The one way that I do that is I have

some time during my commute that I can do that. I have little index cards that I tend to write on morning prayer on,

and that's been really useful for me. The thing that my sponsors reminded me sometimes is that the is is the chapter is titled into action, not into thought. I was all about, you know, well, can't we just think this through and everything will be fine? And I often joke with folks about this, like, what is with all this action? Action is not my natural state. I want to be the recipient of other people's actions. I don't want to have to put any effort into this.

I want to be the recipient of good things coming to me without even having to think about it. And, and unfortunately for me, that has not been the path. Action has been required. And so the spiritual experience getting getting that spiritual experiences has been,

you know, involved action lately. Now action is butting up against the willingness to take the action and the ability to

continue to know myself deeper and to basically say that anytime I'm beginning a thought or a sentence with, well, she should

or boy, my employer really ought to, or why am I not getting dot dot dot, you know, any of those things are a warning sign for me to go ahead and just stop and say, OK, some prayer and meditation is appropriate here because I'm, I'm telling people how to do things.

So the idea is that spirit absolutely is the solution.

The Speaking of my spiritual or the the seeking of my spiritual connection is accomplished through actions, and the actions that I take to do that are going to result either visibly to me or invisibly, everything that is going to manifest in my life for me.

The major

milestones in my spiritual experience here would be, First off, admitting that I even needed to have one, that this was a potential solution. I'd gone through all the intellectual solutions

and it basically gotten to that point where it's like, well, what the heck, you know, might as well might as well give this a try. I've I've tried everything else that I could think of and as insane is this even sounds, you know, a spiritual thing. Let's go ahead and go for it. And the second step experience of coming to believe that a power could restore me to sanity.

I was given an exercise a couple times through the steps that I thought was really powerful, which is that

I wrote down,

you know what I came to believe. And so the exercise that I'd really recommend to people that was very powerful is, you know, write down.

I came to believe that God could and would fill in the blank. You know, I came to believe that God could and would provide me with a relationship even better than Andre. You know, I came to believe that God couldn't would put me in a job that I would feel comfortable in that I and that I would know that I'm in the right job.

You know, I came to believe that God could and would provide financial resources for me, whatever that might mean, and that I would be comfortable with whatever that might mean.

And my my particular assignment was to do a hundred of those. And at the beginning of it, I thought, Oh, well, that is going to be just impossible.

But I got about five of these came to believe statements into it. And suddenly they really just started coming off the top of my mind until I don't know, like maybe 80 or so. And the last, the last twenty were more thoughtful, you know, maybe more

intellectual in their approach. But that was a very powerful exercise. And so if if with a sponsor you, you know, want to do that, I think it would be great on your own, you can do that. But as I said before, the on my own experience has been a lot less powerful than the with the sponsor experience

came to believe and then turning my will and my life over to God. I have done that several times. I tend to do that as I walk to the bus in the morning. I do the third step prayer. I also have

just try to do a lot of conscious thought on that, which is

OK. God, you know what it whatever you want me to be today, I will be that. Whatever your purpose for me today is, I will try to do that

and to go with that flow

because a lot of days these days actually for my whole life, it seems

I, I see the world through a view that my mind basically says

to the best,

you know, this is how I think about it. Like, well, despite all appearances, I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Despite the way that I think that the world should be what I think it should look at look like the the world looks the way that it's supposed to look right now.

And so, you know, it's sort of this, despite all evidence the contrary, everything that I don't want to see

is, is really the truth that I need to be seeing right now. And the power of the third step, I think is getting out of my way.

I heard the speaker yesterday talk about it being a commitment to go ahead and carry through with the rest of the steps. I've, you know, take that to heart as well. And my work with sponsees, you know, while I always hope for some sort of miraculous enlightenment and parting of the clouds when, when we do that, I, I personally have never had that happen. And so that's something that I think is really,

you know, experiential. I just I just have to go with it every day and to turn my

self over to God every day.

Another action exercise that I did with that that was

prescribed to me was to write it out. You know, I'm, I,

I'd rather think it out when I find that for me, when I think it out, I think that I actually thought it, when in fact it was just about a 10th of a second that went through my mind.

And that the power to the sponsorship for me is that,

you know, I can be actually doing something

and that I have to, I, I'm more likely to hold myself accountable and say, well, you know, I, I, I thought about my fifth step.

I, I I gave it to you in my mind.

I had that conversation with myself many times,

you know, So the, the actual doing of it was really important. The, the, the 4th step. I had a very profound experience with the 4th step, which was

I had done the four step in a workshop format, which was really helpful at the time.

And that was followed by a fifth step. And it, it did give me an opportunity to take care of some really major roadblocks that were on my way. But it was when I worked my second four step, first time under sponsorship, that I really came away from that with just the most amazing feeling. Like while I really have the instruction book for Ed now,

I had never really felt like I had the instruction book for how I worked before. I never understood,

you know, at an emotional level. So it was, it was something that was very important for me to do, including the sharing with another person and with, you know, God and certainly with myself, that these are just character behaviors that I developed over the years in order to survive in the world as best as I could.

It was neither bad nor good. They weren't moral judgments in the terms of how we think about good and bad and you know, if you're going to be condemned for something or not. It was just behaviors that I took in order to survive in the world as best as I could.

And then the really neat thing that I discovered too is is that I can do four steps anytime I want to. I can do a four column inventory at any point in time. Maybe there are points when I want to do a much more robust one and

to have that be very deep. And there's other times when something is just bugging me and I can very quickly whip, whip through the four column format and discover what's really underneath all of that. And so it's kind of like,

you know, a teaching aid in a way.

So anyway, so give me a moment to pause here and I'm going to check my notes here and make sure I'm on track for what I would like to share with you.

Yeah. So you know, the 4th step, basically what I continue to discover even more and more through inventories is, is that I'm just as frightened and confused now as I was that I didn't know that I was, you know, back here at age 20. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm just as frightened and confused now

and, and, and now a lot of times my four step,

you know, revolves around the consciousness that I don't know what I don't know. I don't know that getting what I think I want is going to get me what I really need. And I have to rely on my higher power to just guide and direct me every day to get to what I need. And if that doesn't match up with what I want, then that's fine.

You know, my conscious idea of what I want versus what I need is, is really different.

You know, Step 6, becoming entirely ready. I've never been entirely ready to do anything in my entire life,

so being entirely ready for me just means being entirely ready to do this to the best of my ability today. And I get as many redos as I want to. You know I can. I can be entirely ready to do step 6:00 every day. And if I need to same thing with

amends and being coming willing asking God to remove my character defects. So the, you know, step 7 asking God to remove my defects. I've had a couple of very profound experiences with that, where in my first step 7,

I really did feel that some of the awful compulsive behaviors that I had around controlling other people did leave me and that I didn't need to do those anymore.

That through the spiritual experience I was able to basically know well, that just doesn't work. Doesn't work for me, doesn't work for them. I don't, I don't feel compelled to do that anymore. It it does, they don't even show up on the on the radar of potential behavior anymore.

And then I've had other seven step types of things where I have definitely experienced that

the amplitude of what I am trying to get done is dialed way down. The power on the tools that I'm using is getting dialed way down. So while I still might have a hammer as my preferred tool, I know that when I'm tapping on that toothpick with a hammer

that I just need to tap on it very lightly.

Everything doesn't have to come with a huge amount of effort behind it anymore. And so that's how some of my character defects have been removed.

Other profound moments for me have been the Step 9 experience. I've I've done pretty much one major

9th step in the trailing years here. I have only really one conscious amends yet to be made, which is to a employer where I stole thousands of dollars worth of stereo equipment.

And so if you have experience with making amends to employers, talk to me later, please.

You know, and, and that's a great place to be. So the making of amends for me has been

an experience where I really asked for a lot of help from my higher power. The last one I made was to somebody that I stole some computer paper from at a job that I had literally in my 20s, believe it or not.

And that was a need to make amends that came to me as I was working to work, working through some other stuff

through that guy's son. I was, I was able to find him. He's retired in some Park City, UT, I think it is. And the

you know, I, I said, OK, God, let's do this. Called him up, told him who I was,

reminded him of who I was, explained the situation.

You know, Offered to make amends however

appropriate, told him what I thought the harm was and shut up and tried to listen to the response. And for me, amends have been very miraculous in that almost all of them have turned out to be very affirming experiences to me, where the person to whom I was making amends

has. Basically, what I heard

was that

I, I was forgiven,

that my

feeling of how much harm had been done was completely distorted,

that

I was

a human being just like everybody else, and that while they appreciated the honesty,

they ended up loving me anyway. And, and that,

you know, if you'd asked for me to predict what would happen, that would have never even been on my list,

you know, So through the spiritual power of the program, the things that I cannot even imagine happening are the things that I end up experiencing.

And that's, and that's very interesting. The, the amends before that, I was walking down the street to catch the bus to work one day and suddenly this other employer from, I don't know, only maybe 15 years ago crossed my mind in what I had done to her in that workplace. And that was completely unexpected. That was a revelation to me where I'm like, Oh, I didn't, you know, that person wasn't even on my inventory. I had no idea, but it was percolating inside of me and it was something that

God felt that OK, it's the time, you know, this is going to be revealed to him and he has to work through this detail, you know, do the do the steps apply the apply the rigor of the steps to this and and get it done. And so I did that too. And she

also received my amends very graciously. And it was through that process that I understood really what harm was. So, you know, we talk about step 8, making a list and become, you know, willing to, to, to do this.

I didn't understand that the harm was not spying on somebody elses phone calls. It essentially revolved around that, but that the real harm was that it made the workplace uncomfortable for this woman. She happened to be my boss.

It made the workplace unsafe.

It cast suspicion upon other people in the workplace,

you know, and I always thought of the harm is like, you know, sort of checkbook kind of harm. I still, I stole 50 bucks out of my mom's purse, you know, or whatever that kind of thing. I never really

before the 12 steps in the rigor of of doing this, understood really what the harm was. The harm underneath the, you know, the harm underneath the action is kind of the way that I think about it. So the action was,

you know, spying on somebody's phone calls, but the harm went much deeper than that. And that that's been really helpful to me to understand that and to be much more conscious in the world as I react to people today and I'm in the workplace and in life today because I don't want to have to have any of that to ever clean up again.

I joke that,

you know, I haven't stolen anything

from where I'm working right now.

And to me, that sounds as funny as hearing an addict say, I paid my utility bill this month.

You know, I I I have a car. I made a car payment. It's like, well, yeah, we expect you to do that. That's just, that's just normal, you know, I mean, that's what normal people do. And so me for me as a family member, you know, to be able to say I haven't stolen anything from where I work right now is is just so funny because it's like, well, of course we don't expect you to steal anything from your employer. Thank you so much.

But we do have cameras everywhere. So just in case you get a thought, don't don't be doing that.

So the, you know, the 9th step, very powerful and, and I,

you know, to, to, to work through the steps, I'll just say I did what I was told. I was led through this.

I didn't really have

a huge amount of,

I don't know, I mean, I had desire, but

it wasn't something like, you know, a college course or something where I knew, oh, I'm going to take these steps and at the end I'm going to get something. It was, it was much more of like, why take these steps? And I don't have any expectation of getting anything out of them.

I've always been pretty much

a disbeliever in the idea that the next thing that's offered to me that I should be doing

is going to result in anything tangible. And so when I have these experiences of being loved by another person or of being contacted or, you know, when I'm, when I'm down in the dumps and, and praying to God, you know, having a pity party, Why, why me? Why me? Why me? You know, and somebody from the past contacts me and tells me how impactful I was on their life right at that very moment.

You know, those types of spiritual experiences I, I would never have put on my agenda

as things that I would expect from doing the work

and the daily maintenance. And I'm going to just kind of wrap it up and say that,

you know, really for me, the, the idea of the spiritual experience has been that if if I'm willing to be courageous, willing to have the willingness, even willing just to ask and pray for the willingness that something will happen

and that that's going to get me closer to where I want to be.

And

that's it. I'll, I'll leave it at that and we'll have time to wrap up.