The 4th National Annual Drug Addicts Anonymous Conference in Jensen Beach, FL

Snacks that y'all are eating today so I hope you enjoy. You don't like anything, then take it up with somebody else.

So next speaker we have is Chris M from West Palm. I didn't actually know who this gentleman was till about half hour ago, but then I realized I was having a full on conversation with him last night. So with that, I give you Chris.

My my name is Chris Martinez. I'm a drug addict,

a grateful member of Drug Addicts Anonymous, and really grateful and blessed and fortunate to be here today. I,

I want to thank all the committee for this, this fantastic event. I definitely want to give a shout out to Derek. I know that he had like many like nights with like no sleep, probably thinking about how he can make this event better and what he can contribute and all of the people that gather with you weekly throughout this or yeah, weekly throughout the last year to bring this together. So thanks a lot.

My buddy Brian B, who's not here as well, who I'm I'm sure encouraged

me to have a slot here today and was texting me kind of throughout, like, you want to speak, you want to speak. And

I, yeah, I guess that's, that's kind of indicative of, of my recovery of my process. I once the message was delivered and I had an experience with it, I've been placed in a position to say yes when asked. So super grateful.

Oh, and super impressed by the message that's been delivered by everyone from last night into today.

Like I'm, I'm like, like, like spiritually lifted up.

Uh, starting with the panel yesterday,

Dan coming out here from England and carrying a message abroad. Tara brought a fire message last night, sent us home like electric, you know,

and then getting into it today and Zach and wanted Zach on Step 1, Johnny on two and three. And then Bing did a fantastic job talking about inventory and sharing his story.

So I guess I'll share about, you know, step six and seven and the only way that I feel,

you know, like I have anything to stay about 6:00 and 7:00 as if I've had an experience with the steps that came before that. Why did I have an experience with the steps that came before that? Well, it's a lot like steerage to Captain's Table. It's a lot like page 17 in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a lot like I can't have a solution if I didn't have the problem in the first place.

And my truth is that I had the problem for a long time before I was ever, ever in a position to be able to have an experience with the first step.

And I came to 12 step rooms for a long time. And I raised my hand. I said, my name is Chris and I'm a, you fill in the blank, right? Whatever meeting I'm in, you know, you fill in the blank. And I never really knew what that meant. I knew that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol. And like, it always led me back to rooms like this. I knew that there was usually some things that led up to me landing in a room like this. I O'Brien B is here, man. Bless you, brother. Bless you man.

I know, I know for me that the circumstances that would always lead me back to rooms like this

were, were never good circumstances. They weren't usual circumstances either. Like they weren't the circumstances of the people that were around me. They weren't the circumstances of my fears, the people that when I took the first drinking drug that we started with, Those weren't though. They weren't having those type of circumstances.

And then later down the road, those that that were falling into the same category all of a sudden started falling off the scene and either they're spending the rest of their life in prison or they're dead

and not too much in between.

So there was something really interesting that Ben, Ben talked about, you know,

this, this idea of being, I can't remember the term he used, but I call it like slavery, right? Like, or we can call it imprisonment or like we can call whatever we want. And my whole life I was fighting a system, you know, like the, you know, like FTW. And you know, like I had this whole idea that the world was against me. And it was always the manner, as always, the system was always the position, the institution, like wherever I landed, it was always that. And if I could just fix that, or if I could achieve freedom from that, then I would be good.

And I'm always talking about Matthew. I'm always talking about a release date. I'm always talking about when I'm going to get out,

just wait till I get out and I got a plan because I'm going to get my freedom.

It's like I just wanted to be free. What I didn't know all along is that the biggest imprisonment or slavery that I was in was an internal slavery was the slavery to self was the bondage of self is the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about. And there's no easy access point out of that especially itself is trying to get self out of imprisonment

slavery.

And I'm waiting for a release date. And the sad truth is is that as long as I'm imprisoned myself, that release date is never going to come. I'm always going to be in prison to my own misery, my own circumstances, my own devices, all the things that I create out of living a life based on self. Will is Johnny T talked about this morning.

But I can't even see anything about self if I can't see what it looks like with my own experience with drugs and alcohol.

So I had to become convinced. I had to become convinced. I call it a first step conclusion. Some people talk about a first step experience. It's semantics. It doesn't matter what you call it. It just matters that you identify for yourself.

And my experience told me that no matter how many methods, no matter how I tried to beat the game, no matter some days, some way, I'm going to be above this. I continually found myself back in these types of places.

I found that once I started, I had trouble controlling how much I was going to do, how long I was going to do it, and who I was going to hurt along the way. I was a liability. The people's security was at risk if you were involved in my life. And when I say security, I'm talking about your physical security, and I'm definitely talking about your emotional security, because drug addicts and Alcoholics have a real gift for winning people over.

We have a real gift for getting people to believe in us again when we given them complete evidence and research not to believe.

And the biggest mistake they can ever make is grant that wish. Because as soon as I know I have you won over, I'm gonna run through you one more time

and I'll come back with some tears and a good story about how you should trust me or bail me out again.

Sometimes weak, sometimes months, sometimes years.

I don't know. Once I start when I'm going to stop.

I know that the greatest thing that ever stopped me was usually when I sat in the back of a car and some handcuffs. When I sat in front of a judge and he told me you got some sort of time that you're going to do that stuff was significant to get me separated for a little bit. But once I hit the yard, then I know where to go.

Once I hit the yard, when I'm in, when I'm actually in an institution, right, when I'm actually in captivity or whatever you want to call it, I can still find mine.

So interestingly enough, you can Take Me Out of this environment and place me in an entirely new environment and I'll still find it in this mind that I have that continually takes me back to the first one is so cutting, baffling, and powerful. I just can't define it. It was the greatest conclusion that I came to as I made a first step conclusion was that no matter what, somehow someday I'm going to convince myself it'll be different if and it'll be different if. Sounded like 100 different things.

Sounded like if. I just got my mag cart and smoke weed. I'm from California,

and like, we've had legalized marijuana for 20 years. And that would have been a great solution,

managing beer rather than liquor or, you know, like, you know, for me it was more like

crack cocaine. And crack cocaine led me to stealing from everyone closest to me. And so I was like, that doesn't work. And I go to jail, you know, and have the police and all that stuff. And then methamphetamines and benzo seems like a lot better deal because I just steal from everybody else. Oh, that's like outside of the immediate circle.

And I come up with some big plans and ideas and schemes and all that stuff and I'm trying to hustle, right? And then that fails me. So I'm like, maybe, you know, opiates will be the solution.

First time I shoot dope I overdose and get left in a room for dead right? You think that would stop me

with periods of separation, my mind always leading me back to the first drink of first drug.

So wow, what a what a conclusion to come to based on my own experience. Because if at this point in the game it was no longer my name is Chris and I'm a drug addict. It was like my name is Chris and I actually know what being a drug addict is. I had a real experience with not just the short flip notes version of step one, but with like the 1st 60 pages of this book which talks about steps one and two.

And what I'll say in interest of being open minded is I don't come open minded to spiritual ideas out of like virtue. I don't come open minded to spiritual principles or anything that we're talking about in this rooms because I'm a great guy and it seems like I should put my best foot forward and like really try this thing, you know?

I come to step two and three and the idea around open mindedness out of pure necessity

because that conclusion I drew in step one was going to kill me. That conclusion in Step 1 led me to believe that my life today, as I stand, is a miracle.

To have blood rolling through my veins, to have a heartbeat is a miracle.

So OK, I can be open minded and when I'm brand new I don't know what being open minded really looks like.

Later down the road when I come to find in steps two and three is that this God idea was deep down inside of me all along, deep down on every inside of every man, woman and child lies the fundamental idea of God is what the big book says.

So maybe I gained some access to power that was running in and through me. And by the time I got to step four, I didn't even really know what that power was. But I did something that I had never done in 15 years of trying, like arriving in a 12 Step 4 format, right? In 15 years, I did the first thing I had never done, which is I put pen to paper and I wrote inventory like Ben described, written a lot of inventories throughout my recovery. But this one was specifically important because I've never done it before.

I spent a lot of time coming and hijacking people's time saying I need a sponsor. Can you take me through the steps? And when they give me the instructions, when we get to four, I'm like, hold on.

So I needed some more experience. And that experience led me to writing inventory.

And I guess really the reason that, uh, well, better yet, steps four and five give me all the research and evidence I need to stop talk about step 6:00 and 7:00. And I know I have like a concentrated period of time today. So I really want to try to focus on what the committee brought me up here to talk about, which is step, step 6:00 and 7:00.

But where do I get my evidence about my defects? I get the evidence about my defects as a result of hopefully entering some sort of relationship with the power greater than myself, putting pen to paper, and following the precise instructions laid out in the big book. How you write an inventory doesn't matter. All that matters is that you take a look at what they're actually trying. It says we're usually as definite about this and it gives us some instructions so we get to writing.

All my defects were laid out before me as I wrote inventory, and I had no idea.

All my defects were a makeup of all the anger, all the resentment. My, my, my man. Ben was talking about a grudge list. I like that term, too. It made a lot of sense to me. I wanted to grudge it out in step four, and then they started telling me about columns four and five, where I had to look at it from a different angle. That's where I start to see my defects. Right. However you write inventory comp or whatever.

My fears,

my sexual conduct,

these precise instructions to appraise

my life up to this point when I'm writing. Wow, I just did a full inventory of my life.

That's OK. That's my little buddy right there.

I'm super grateful that my wife and my kids were able to show up today. We weren't trying to figure out how that would work. Thank you for being here, Steph.

Oh, and we lost a family member last night too. And so that's why I was means a lot that she's here right now.

Defects

6:00 and 7:00. So we got all kinds of outside literature that supports what we do around 6:00 and 7:00. But I'm a big book guy.

I look at the Fords and it says no further authentication is necessary. I look at the the forwards and it says that there exists strong sentiment against any radical changes being made in this book. Because the perfect road map for all 12 steps is laid out right here. And all of the fellowships that have come about as a result of what this book did is the reason we're standing in this room today.

So we got two paragraphs on six and seven. And my belief, my core belief, is that's all we need. Later down the road, we can do some more work on ourselves and dig deeper and take a look at some other things. But when I'm new and when I'm sharing the message with someone, I want to carry the precise instructions laid out in the big book.

So step six, it says we reviewed. Oh, wait, that's fear. So we're not on 68. We're actually on 76. For those of you that got books and want to take a look, it talks about answering to our satisfaction. They're talking about the five proposals after we've complete inventory, after we complete a fifth step, right? And we've reviewed our first five steps. And we asked ourselves if we tried to make mortar without saying, we asked if we can answer these questions to our satisfaction.

And then it says, then we take a look. Look at step 6. We've emphasized willingness as being indispensable.

It's a lifeline, It's vital, must have it. Are we now ready? And I believe the core principle or the core piece behind Step 6 is about being ready. We talk about willingness. They associate principles with steps. They say willingness is step six. I think that that's great. I think we have to be willing to do all the work. That's what we determined, right? But in step six, we have to be ready. We had to have concluded that all the work we did was was sufficient to become ready to do what? To let God have not

let my sponsor have not let my counselor have not let the rooms have. To let God have

to let God remove all the things from much which we have admitted or objectionable. And I just say the things that don't work. Where do I find the things that don't work? I go back to my fifth step. I go back to the inventory that I wrote, but things that don't work were right there. It's all the things that were holding me hostage, keeping me like trapped in the bondage of self. The things that were objectionable I just wrote on. Hopefully, if I was thorough and honest like they talked about the guiding principles behind Step Forward.

Can he now take all of them, everyone?

The question is, can he not? Will he? I just want to like really point that out. Can he? And when I got to Step 2, sure, we talk about, you know, this idea of am I willing to believe that's where it starts? But where it takes us to is it says God is either everything or he is nothing.

Am I placing limitations on what this power can do? And when I look around this room, it's impossible. It's impossible for me to actually place a limitation on what this power can do because we got miracles

sitting all around us. If you got 5 minutes sober and this is the first time you're coming back, whatever the story is 3020, thirty years, we got miracles.

And I'm a place of limitation on God and say he can't have this, He can't have that. I don't believe, right? It's either he is everything or he is nothing. And that's a great place for me to remain in my recovery because no matter how tall the order, no how matter how big the problem is, I know that He's got me.

Whether the outcome is in my favor or it's not in my favor, whether it's what I want or not what I want. Is he everything or is he nothing?

If I really ask myself on that on a micro scale as I go throughout my day, am I living in God's will? Most the time, no,

because most the time I want to get what I want to get what I want to get it, no matter what.

With a little bit of awareness to this work and a relationship with God I start to go through my days with, I say my peripheral starts to open up. I start to see how God is in all those micro things and he's in the macro things. He's in life, he's in death, he's in small, he's in big, he's in you name it, He's in everything.

So am I willing now that he am? I can he now take all of them? Everyone, If we still claim to something, we will not let go. We ask God to help us be willing and it's real simple. If I'm blocked by something, I do what I was taught to do in step three. When we started initiating prayer in the book,

I pray whenever the book says we ask. That's an indication of prayer. So I go right back to the stuff that I was doing in step three. Hopefully I was doing all throughout Step 4 because the way the instructions were delivered to me is there's prayers associated all through the work. And then I really sit quietly, write the prayers and ask and wait for direction.

Or did I just try to muscle through my inventory to get a result, to finish, to complete, to get somewhere right? Or did I ask and wait for instructions?

God's intuition is something that's developed. It's like I talked to all my guys about this stuff is that it's a practice. It is a practice. It's a practice, and the practice never changes. The circumstances, the situations, the things always change. That's life. But the practice remains the same, and it's a solution that can work for all my problems,

Not just the convenient ones, not just my drug and alcohol problem.

All of them.

So if I'm, if I'm tripped up on something, I go back to this thing that I've been practicing prayer and I ask God to help me be willing

and I'm moving to step 7. And again, that word hits US right in the very beginning. It says when ready, step 7 is something that I was instructed to do on my own. It wasn't a prayer that I shared with my sponsor. It was this prayer that I shared with God and myself when I was ready.

Says we say something like this and if you start to personalize some prayer and you make it your own and you have your own experience with it, that's real cool. The book suggested when we get to the third step, prayer, it's

says we you something around the words of something around the language of we're the wording was of course, quite optional. So that says to me that prayer and the wording of prayer is optional as long as we express the sentiments or the ideas behind the prayers. So step 7, says my creator. I'm now willing that you should have some of me.

No,

I'm now willing that you should have all of me.

Just like the talk today, good and bad.

I get the chills just saying it right now. And if you want testimony, talk to my wife, because I got plenty of the bad to come with the good.

I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character, not end of sentence, but a continuation of the same sentence which stands in the way of my usefulness.

I'm asking God to remove every defected character that stands in the way of my usefulness, not make me be the perfect honest Boy Scout or whatever, go to some unrealistic version of myself. I'm asking him to remove the defects that prevent me from being useful. And the crazy thing about being a drug addict and an alcoholic is you're going to have a lot of defects that allow you to be useful.

You're going to have a lot of defects that allow you to be of service to God's world.

So I don't need a pool from a hat and determine which thing I'm going to work on, which defect I'm going to work on today. I'm going to let God decide what defects He can make me useful with.

Then we start to have a new conversation. Defect or asset.

The things that grossly handicapped me my entire life become the thing that put me in a position to be the most helpful to God's world,

the most helpful to my family, to the people that I hurt so badly,

the most useful.

And I tear the whole home down over and over again. And everyone's always wondering if the next phone call is going to be whether Chris is alive or dead. Every phone call is what jail is he going to be at this time? Every phone call is going to be how much money does he need?

Then all of a sudden these defects turn into this thing where my family can love me for exactly who I am and I don't have to be any different than I came in here. I just have to be willing to let God run the show.

It's so crazy, man. I got a new employer in step three. He was deep down inside of me all along and I spent so much time trying to block him out.

I took all these different avenues and techniques to try to

God from my life. He was that thing inside of me when I was a little kid, stealing candy bars and comic books, saying this is a bad idea. You know, when your stomach starts turning and you're like, this probably isn't what I should be doing. That was God and I just shushed him out. And drugs and alcohol help a lot with that. They help a lot with that. My spiritual malady. Drugs and alcohol are a great treatment for that,

but having an open heart to and having some clarity and having a relationship with that power

far better than anything I could have ever experienced in drugs and alcohol. A.

So we want God to take away every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows to me and my fellows.

Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.

Amen. So what I get from that last piece is, again, I'm asking for strength to go out from here and do your bidding to do God's will. And there's a summary of the work that I've done in steps 3 through 7. Amen. Brings the third step prayer and the 7th step prayer together with all the work that I did in inventory to get there. There's no way in at the end of step three. There is at the end of step 7, and I'm asking for strength to go out and do His bidding. What does that sound like? Well, whoever the speaker after lunch is, better come

the heat about 8:00 and 9:00, because that's what God's bidding sounds like to me. And not just making some of the convenient amends, but preparing, like we said in step eight, to make them all become willing to make them all. And then you get to get into the literature and find out what that sounds like.

Step six and seven is something like people, you know, it's like blessing or curse, defect or asset. I don't know. I don't have the answers. I have my own personal stuff and I have qualified 12 step individuals in my life who I can go and discuss these things with. Our practice in 10 and 11 continues to raise our awareness of what our defects look like in a daily life practice. And if I have qualified 12 step members in my life, then I have people to continue raising my awareness.

I have human power coupled with God's power to help me stay the course. But I can't do this thing without you guys. I couldn't have found this thing if it wasn't for you guys. This is this is a God centered program and God's working. I don't know all the Johnny T spoke about the agents, the agents of God that are in the room, the agents of God that were here before me and the ones that are coming after me

where God started his work in a little hospital with Bill W. And this dude Ebby has transformed and worked its way out in 2019, September 21st. By the way, I paroled seven years ago today.

By the by the way, as a sober man I got to show up from my own grandmothers funeral a year ago today.

I got to stand in front of a room of our family who I had stolen from, hurt, lied to, cheated, couldn't be trusted and give a eulogy for a woman that stood by my side. No matter how low down, I win.

And today I get to stand in this room with my two sons and my wife, and I get to have the opportunity of carrying the message that was delivered to me.

I want to say that

that I tried a lot of methods

that I had a lot of good reasons to get sober, clean or whatever we want to call it all throughout my life, from a real early age, I was like a,

I don't know, people talk about selling drugs. I don't I don't get it. I was like a real nickel dime dub like bottom of the barrel scrapping to get by type of dude. If I thought I was selling drugs, I was usually doing all the drugs I thought I was selling and I was owing people money.

And any glimpse where I thought it could get better was always always quickly followed by by a lot of pain, tears, sorrow and collect phone calls for me.

There's something that happens in these rooms when we. Tara R said it perfectly last night.

If you're not on fire about what we're doing in here, it's because you're not doing it in here.

If you're sitting around in a question or whether I should raise my hand and share, do I carry a message? I If I don't have a message to carry, I better get one. If I'm just going to camp out in the rooms and take a seat, that's cool. I hope your experience keeps you alive and brings you back. But I also hope you suffer enough that when you get back, you're ready

because there's a real fire that happens. Bill talks about, Bill talks about the feeling was electric. And I can tell you, for me that when the feeling became electric wasn't step nine. I wasn't real too sure about all this stuff that we were doing all the way up until 8:00 and 9:00. And for me, the educational variety of a spiritual experience type of dude, I saw God's evidence in making amends. I saw God's evidence happening every time I came forth with a little bit of money or I made another approach, or I followed up

payment on someone that I told would pay, following through with whatever the next indicated action was. I was able to look back and see that's how God's working in my life because I wasn't getting down with like to get on your knees and wait for God to come up out of the skies thing. It wasn't working for me. I'm just like my man right here where I'm in. I'm in the jailhouse and I'm ready to pray. I'll pray with the Muslims, I'll play with the Jews, I'll pray with the Buddhists. I'll get in any spiritual circle you've got. I need healing. I need it quick and as soon as I get out I need a bag.

But in step nine, I saw the evidence of God working in and through me.

In and through me. The literature suggests over and over again that God is inside. If you look for the subtle ways that is, it is mentioned throughout the book. It never talks about this. You know, it does say one time that we have our head up in the cloud, our prayers up in the clouds, but we have our feet firmly planted on planet earth.

And this is where God's work is done. And I see it as a result, as a byproduct of doing each every indicated step the way that it was laid out in this book.

Oh,

so what's so cool about the structure of today's event is that we're building necessity. And I hope that those of you that have had the experience are identifying that. And if you hadn't had the experience that you're having the opportunity to see that because necessity starts with step one and works its way to step 12,

and we live in those 12 steps. I don't know what it means to be through the work. I don't know what it means to be finished with the work. I have no idea when people say I did my steps past hints. I do not understand what that means

because either are living and breathing this thing. Either this thing is become part of who I am or probably I'm not out here doing what Tara talked about last night, bringing the fire and what fire we talked about talking about the fire of God that's changing, making these miracles that sit right here right now. No matter how far gone you've been, no matter how many ideas you still think you have, God can take care of that.

I know my experience is that

as I feel humbled

and honored to be a member of this fellowship, that I don't regret or deny the past or wish to shut the door on it. It's become the greatest thing that I could actually utilize to be helpful in this world. And up until this point of my life, I didn't know how to be helpful. I knew how to take. I knew how to get. I knew how to convince, to manipulate, to win. Least seemingly, those were the things I was doing. But I was, I was

a lifetime loser, right? I was the the the deck was always stacked against me and it was always your guy's fault.

But this power has the

capacity

to create miracles. So we're each of our own testimony of a miracle. And if you do the work and if you get involved with some good sponsorship, hopefully you can find your truth in it. And that's the biggest thing that we do is we seek our own truth. We seek our own experience. And although I've heard people say I'll never hear anything original in the rooms, every time I hear someone talk about

every time I talk, I hear someone talk about how they came to believe

in their own words and their own experience, I hear something new. So I hear something new all the time. I see something new happen with every person that embarks on this work and has their own experience with it. And the only thing that I hope to do is stay a little bit closer to God as I go every day and keep trying to do what's laid out before me. Thanks for letting me share.