The topic of relapsing sponsees at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

Sounds good to set the time for the meeting. I will read an extract from the chapter to Wives, page 111.

The first principle of success is that you should never be angry. Even though your husband becomes unbearable and you have to leave him temporarily, you should, if you can, go without Wrinkle. Patience and good temper are most necessary. Our next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do about his drinking. If he gets the idea that you are an egg or a killjoy, your chance of accomplishing anything

useful maybe zero. He will use that as an excuse to drink more.

He will tell you he is misunderstood. This may lead to lone evenings for you. He may seek someone else to consult him, not always another man. The topic of tonight's meeting is relapse, and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than a typical sharing on that hand. Over to Tim.

You're muted. There we go, unmuted now. So I'm Tim, I'm an alcoholic, just as I know not everyone in the room knows who I am. Well, I'm not really anyone. I'm just, I've just been sober for 28 years and I've been sponsoring people for 27.

That's my only qualification. Just because you've done something for a long time doesn't mean you're good at it. Just you need to know. That just means you've done a lot of it.

So you maybe have more stories to tell, but I don't know if you're more effective

what to do. The sponsee relapses.

I'm going to tell a lot of little sort of stories and anecdotes and ideas, which I I before we even get on to what you even do once they've relapsed and come back,

if they come back, is to understand the nature of the relapse. If you understand that, it just makes things

much easier. The first point may be a very obvious one, but by the time they've relapsed it's too late.

I remember I was coming back from town on a Friday evening many years ago and I was starting at the bus stop and a little call came through on my mobile phone from my sponsee and she said it's me. And I said yes. She said I've had a hot toddy. And I thought, well that's very nice for you. But I, I, I don't know what to do.

I can't. I can't drag it out of you. If you've had one, you've had one. They'll have to call me when it's worn off

and and that started very long relapse actually. Then she called me a few years later and said she'd finally got a year sober and I hope she's still sober now. But once they've had the once, once they've drunk, it's too late.

Now when they've drunk again, it's very sort of tempting. It depends what sort you have.

Sometimes you have a spawn see that drinks again and they go and live in Mozambique and then you never hear of them again. Others others call you and want to talk about the fact they've relapsed as they're having say, the hot Toddy or whatever. And this is in very, very inviting. You think, well, I might be able to get through to them or something. So I'm going to tell someone else's story. I'm going to tell a client one of the famous Clancy stories about this. And I know I've said this before, even maybe a couple of weeks ago, but it's such a good story,

who cares?

So Newcomer relapses and calls up Clancy and says I've let you down, I've let the group down, I've let a A down and most of all I've let myself down.

Clancy, will you, will you come over and help me? So it's 11:00 at night and Clancy's as well. Whenever anyone anywhere reaches out the hand for help, I want the hand of A, A always to be there for that. I'm responsible for it. So it goes over and he talks to him,

this, this drunk with tears of sincerity rolling down his cheeks until 4:00 in the morning. And they finally get it all sorted out. And he drives home. He has one hours sleep. He gets up, he has a shower. He's got to go to work in a few minutes. And there's a call and it's this newcomer again. And the newcomer says Plan CI Thought you said you were going to come over.

I've had conversations with people when they're relapsed

and then later that day they literally don't know they've had the conversation with me, but they were speaking perfectly clearly at the time. There was. I'm such AI used to be a lot more of a mug with with this sort of stuff than I am now. I'm wiser to it now, but

I wish people well. If they've drunk, I wish people well, but there's no point in in trying to carry a message.

There's some various workbooks by Jim W from San Antonio, and there's a passage which he puts in all of them,

which is chilling. I'm going to read it out. This workbook cannot help those who are active in their addictions, and this is the key line. We don't know of any program that can help these people.

Perhaps it is as simple as this. When the time comes to face the healing process, these people avoid the process via their addiction. Common sense tells us we need to totally abstain while working on this healing process. The mind that made us sick cannot make us well in its present state, nor under the influence of the addiction. We need something higher than us, different than us, other than us, which can and will do for us what we cannot do for

this is a mind training and spiritual awakening program. So it is important to be consciously present.

And I think that applies not just with alcohol, but with other addictions too.

So

when I've tried to sponsor people in a, in a, A and that anorexia is out of control, nothing goes in nothing waste of time. You, you've, whatever the process is, has got to be halted.

Tom W tells a story. He says alcoholism is a lot like dancing with a gorilla. You're not done dancing until the gorilla is done dancing. Except in the original story, it wasn't dancing, it was dating.

Except in the original story it wasn't dating.

So if they're dancing, as it were, with the gorilla,

you, you got to wait till the dancers stopped. There's no point trying to get in there and get between the alcoholic and the gorilla because you'll get your arms and your legs yanked off, and not just by the gorilla.

I've got to recognize my own powerlessness over that alcoholism. Another of Tom's stories is about this French Canadian doctor in a a called Doctor Gill, who had a thick French accent. I can't do a French Canadian accent, but I can do a French accent because I form of the French passport

and Gil would Gil would say algorithm. She has three phases.

The first phase is the fun phase. That's when you're having fun.

The second phase is fun plus problems. You have your first divorce, you lose your third job, but you're still having fun. So self phase problems

and the the point of this story is

whilst they're still having fun, don't interfere, don't interfere with it. By the time you get to people who are just in the problems phase, some people are willing. So in the big book it talks about the the well known stages of a spree. So it's an, it's an under discussed line, the well known stages of Esprit.

Once I've gone out,

you gotta wait till it runs its course. That could be a couple of hours. My friend James, who some of you know had a bottle of wine after eight years and he's been, oh I don't know, 1718 years sober since then, just a bottle of wine. That was all. It lasted one night. That was it.

Sometimes it takes days, weeks, months or years to run its course and sometimes it doesn't run its course. It's it's got legs again.

Some other points about relapse.

There's a story called The Strange or Not the Strange, Strange Case of Doctor Jacqueline, Mr. Hyde, and it's about this doctor in Scotland, I think, who takes potions to become this monstrous character called Mr. Hyde. In the book it says to indulge unstated vices without detection. So he wants to do something and get away with it

and he takes this potion. He becomes this other character so that he himself, the doctor, is not implicated in what Mr. Hyde get up, gets up to

say. He'll take the potion and become Mr. Hyde. He'll indulge whatever vice he wants to indulge in. Violence, mostly,

and then he'll take another potion to bring himself back to becoming Doctor Jekyll. Now, a couple of strange things happened during the course of the story. If, if you, if you don't want spoilers, then, you know, go go make a cup of tea right now.

Um, but during the course of the story, he starts turning into the monster without having to take the potion.

Also, he needs higher and higher doses of the counter potion to bring himself back. And then eventually the counter potion to bring himself back stops working and he can't turn himself back. And that's the, the difficulty is people think when they go out, they, they, I've worked with a lot of relapses over the years. They always think they can come back. I thought I could.

I first came to a A in. I'd been stopping starting drinking for 2 1/2 years when I came to a A in January 1993

and back of every single relapse. I had a number of relapses between them then and July 1993. Behind every single one was the thought that if things get really bad, I'll just come back

so I can handle the consequences of a slip. What harm could it do? I mean, something really dangerous might happen, but it's really unlikely. There was basically the perception that a slip is a calculated risk and it's not. I mean, it is a calculated risk, but there's more I might turn and not be able to get back. And my friend, I've always say this disease, unfortunately, sadly, the best example,

my, my friend Paul and my first two years of recovery,

we spoke for about an hour every night on the phone

until around July 1995 for a few weeks, he kind of stopped calling and he drank again. And, and he's, he's not, I don't think he's properly back. He's tried to come back a few times. He's got a few weeks, a few months, but it's never taken again.

So we don't bring ourselves back, we have to wait till we're brought back by the process

it needs to work itself through.

When I start drinking, I don't want to stop. The person I become when I go back into the drinking world has no interest in sobriety.

That's why there's no such thing as a safe slip. Also, even if people can bring themselves back physically, that won't necessarily do it. There was a when I was in early sobriety in Russia in 1993,

I slipped and then tried to go to lots of meetings, but it wasn't taking in the same way. I found it really easy in the in the January, February to just not drink. Now, after a couple of slips, it was incredibly difficult. I couldn't go

a couple of days. I had to stay with people to not drink physically. And then as soon as I was back in my flash, I was drinking again. So you can bring your body back to a it doesn't mean your mind will come back. Your mind will come back when it wants to come back. So relapse is a very, very serious thing. I think the seriousness of it can be underrated,

underestimated, especially with the word slip, which makes it sound like slipping on a banana skin or something.

Of course, the origin of slip is Bill W describing someone as slipping from God's grace.

Now there are diverging views in a A on what is behind a slip. But as I say, Bill W talks about people slipping from God's grace as though it sort of happens involuntarily

in I think it's in Cleveland. I may it's either Cleveland or Akram. They had a pamphlet, this is in the 1930s, where it stated that if you slip,

you have done so on purpose and you've resigned from a A, there you go, you've resigned your membership. So there were different perceptions at the time as to what was going on. My personal view is that the truth is, is somewhere in between, and we'll come to that.

When I look back at my own relapses, there were two things going on in every single one. By the way, some people say you shouldn't really call it relapse unless you've actually fully recovered fast. It's basically continuing to drink. That's really what's going on.

I think that may be accurate. But every single time I resumed drinking, two things were going on. First of all, the thought of a drink occurred to me. Secondly, I acted on that drink, on that thought of a drink, because it was my thought. I was still in charge. I still saw myself as captain of my own ship. Now I can't control

what thoughts come into my mind.

So the only solution

if you have a mind which wants to drink, is to surrender your decision making process, literally about what to do with your day to a higher power.

I can't retain any agency myself or I'm staffed. As soon as the thought of a drink occurs to me, if I'm in charge, I'll drink. What's her name? Grady OH says that she hears people saying today I have a choice and today I choose not to drink.

And she says, well thank God I don't have a choice because some days I would choose to drink. That's why I don't need, I need not to be in charge. That's why I need my higher power to be in charge, because my higher power isn't first.

Whenever I drank again, I was always still in charge, which means that I needed to surrender. And how now? How do you surrender? It was basically surrendering to the actions of the program today, each day, so that my day from the moment my weary eyes creaks open in the morning until they snapshot at night.

The day was not my own. That was how I treated it. I The day was too dangerous to have in my hands because of what I would do with it.

I was on a very, very short leash. When I got sober. I was a very slippery customer,

So what it meant was taking the actions of the program regardless of what I thought or felt about the actions.

It's impossible. You can't hand over to God very easily when you're very new. You have my experience. You have to hand over to the actions of the program

because that's something concrete. That's something you can you can see people doing. You can follow someone else's instructions because you can see them physically in front of you.

Much easier to do that than to follow what you think God is asking you to do. Later on, there comes a crunch point where it's between you. It's like you're in a boxing ring and there's you in one corner and the desire to drink in the other, and you know that you're going to get knocked out by it and the only thing standing between you and the drink is the higher power. There's other people are just not powerful enough anymore. So they cut. They came a crunch point for me in 1993

where I had to

say to this higher power, I just, I cried out to it. Really

what the words I said didn't matter. I, at some psychological level, I threw myself at the mercy of this higher power recognizing I would drink otherwise and said whatever you need to do, do it. And I was fine that night. I didn't drink. And that was from a point that I knew that I would.

So ultimately it it's it's between, although it's all about the programme of action behind that there's the the the safety net is throwing yourself at the mercy of God

in the moment. And a sponsor of mine who was relapsing once phoned my sponsor, my my sponsor and said, well, when I feel like drinking, what do I do? Do I do my step four? Do I pray, do I meditate? He said it doesn't actually matter what you do as long as you do what you believe to be your higher powers will. And if you have to lie screaming on the floor until the pain of not doing what you want to do passes, do that.

Kind of doesn't matter. The only you have to be able to get through one day not doing the thing that you want to do. And this is in the big book itself, in in the The Alcoholic anonymous #3 story where they say

to him, you can stay sober for 24 hours, can't you? And he says, yeah, anyone can stay sober for 24 hours.

I can as long as I've thrown away the right to choose

whether or not I'm going to drink and simply surrender myself to sobriety and commit to sobriety. And so I'm why I'm just going to have to put up with being sober whether I like it or not, just for today. And that that was when the relapsing stopped.

The causes of relapse. When a sponsee does come back, I pretty much always run through

the. This is a pretty standard list of possible causes. We run through the possible causes to try to identify what's going wrong, and here they are. The first one is step 0

which is the as it were the step before the steps.

And this was my problem for a while. I I wanted to stop drinking forever, but not just yet

to get sober. I've got to want to get sober forever and forever to start now. So while I still wanted to drink, at some level, nothing was going to happen.

There are step one

there there. There are step one reservations, particularly

about the physical craving. There are two sides to a reservation about a physical craving.

I believed that I could have what called a controlled outbreak in that I could go and blow away the cobwebs without too much serious, too many serious things happening.

And of course you can't. That's the whole point of the physical craving. You can't predict at the beginning of the drinking bout whether you're going to be whether nothing is going to happen or whether you're going to get run over or arrested or whatever. And it was like Russian roulette.

The other one we've covered already is the belief that I can toy with my alcoholism and comeback.

There are Step 2 reservations, which I suppose as well, step one, Step 2 reservations about

believing that I can stay sober without a spiritual awakening, That the knowledge of A A and a few of the a A actions will be sufficient to keep me sober.

Believing that I can just take a A at my own pace. You know, progress, not perfection. Easy does it? It's amazing the slogans you can find to support that approach

and sometimes people would say it's not a race and I think it is absolutely a race now. It's not a race against Janet and Susan, it's a race against one's own alcoholism, which, as they say, is doing press UPS in the car park outside.

I think the game is to have a spiritual awakening more quickly than the alcoholic ego grows back.

I think that's the deal

and there's now a lot of people.

The difficulty is that a A meetings and fellowship are very effective at keeping people sober for a while and it gives everyone the impression that they can keep people sober indefinitely. But of course that's that's not the case. If you hang around a A for a long time, you'll discover that's not the case,

that the grace period,

the grace period we get. Obviously there is a grace period because if there weren't, how would you get to the spiritual awakening in step 12 to keep you sober if you didn't have grace to get there? It's like you got to get a free pass to get to step 12. Now how much are a free pass you get seems to vary from person to person. It's impossible to tell until it's too late. So you have to treat yourself like you're on a short leash because

you just don't know. You just don't know.

So there are reservations about how fully do I have to give myself to the A, a program to guarantee sobriety. And then there are some step three conditions which I think stop people from

giving in to the notion of sobriety fully. And

you can help tease these out with people

by saying finish this sentence. For me, I believe sobriety is not worth it. If X happens, what's X? What are the events that you think, well, if that happens, it's not worth staying sober?

Or conversely, I believe sobriety is not worth it if X doesn't happen. What ambitions or goals or demands do you have

where if they're not met, it's not worth staying? So, so the bad events you want to avoid and the good events which you think I have to have that to be happy

because I, I have this. I had very specific demands about finance

and success in the external world and as soon as things looked as though they weren't going my way, I thought was the point in being sober and I'd be drunk again.

I had to get to a position where I was

willing to stay sober

even if lots of terrible things happened and even if none of the good things I wanted happened. So the conditions had to go. So this is what I do. I review with people when they do come back from a slip

possible causes. Is it step zero? Is it step one? Is it Step 2? Is it Step 3?

In almost every case,

the actual effort with the program has been half hearted. Often it starts well but then dwindles in the days or weeks before the slip and then boom, they're drunk.

Very, very occasionally you have someone that is working terribly hard

at the program but slips anyway are it's exceptionally rare in my experience. And almost always there's a nasty little secret or there's another addiction which is which people are acting out on. And my sponsor when I was acting out said beware of your own orthodoxy. The reason you're being such a good little a a boy in all these areas over here

is to hide the fact you're doing XY and Z over there. So sometimes like the Super diligent sponsees who are doing absolutely everything, you know, tickety Boo straight away,

there's something being hidden somewhere because that's where the energy is coming from to be so perfect on the surface. So but but that's rare. It's really in almost every case there's half measures going on.

The the only answer

is to offer someone the full program to set out the facts, which is very, which are very basically that

only full measures in my experience guarantees sobriety. And what does full measures mean? It means hammering the first nine steps and

hammering the last three steps. Now, sometimes

when there's a lot of

relapse history,

there's a funny phenomenon. This is going to sound like a mat, like I'm being completely mad, but I think this is a genuine thing, doing the steps to avoid doing the steps. And this is where people will engage in the process of the first nine steps again and again and again in order to avoid actually changing anything. So there's lots of time spent reading and writing and talking and analyzing

and sharing all the defects and doing page after page of inventory. But the person won't get up in the morning, they won't make their bed, they won't stop stealing, they won't stop lying, they won't show up at work. Do you know what I mean?

And I've been guilty of this without drinking, of doing lots of formal step work, but without any real effort to change the things that need to change. So sometimes you have to come at this. If that's the history

when people know the big book backwards, you have to come at it differently. Look at the daily program first

and get steps 1011 and 12 in place. These are people. These are people who've been through the steps before but have relapsed and have got a good understanding of the program in principle. The problem is often not that they don't have a handle on the character defects. The problem is that there is ongoing current harm to people in their lives, and that's why the focus can sometimes be best on steps 10:11 and 12:00. But ultimately,

it kind of my experience it the thing which guarantees sobriety

is willingness and sincerity. The exact is not about the exact mechanics of what you give them to do something my sponsor said once, it doesn't matter what you give them to do as long as you give them something to do and they do it. That if you know, sometimes people say, well, if my sponsor had asked me to, you know, stand on my head on Oxford Street, I would have done it. Of course, no sponsors ever asked anyone to do that. But I have a feeling if someone thought that that was what would keep them sober, it would. It's the act of surrender to

action which seems to make the difference. My first run through the steps

was, between you and me, Embarrassing. I wouldn't give you tuppence for how I worked the steps in the first year. Technically it was a complete disaster. But I did it sincerely and I stayed sober. And the main boxes were ticked. The secrets were conveyed. I made some some terrible amends, but I made them. They were accepted

and you know, I started to take action. This is the key thing. I started to take actions to get my life in order under the direction of the sensible people around me.

A couple of patterns to watch out for.

Um, there's 11 pattern which you could call good dog, bad dog. So when the sponsee comes back, lots of remorse from the drinking, hugely sincere immediately after the slip. Initially very high levels of compliance, like almost going above and beyond, but then it dwindles and then they disappear and then they relapse and then they rinse and repeat. And this goes round and round

around what's usually going on here

when you talk to when I've talked to people who've got this cycle, because this was my cycle actually. Good dog, bad dog.

There was one chap I used to talk to a lot and try and help. I don't know how much it helped but kept me sober.

Well, I'd say what happened before the slip in the few days. So my head told me this, My head was telling me that my head, my head, my head, my head.

And it struck me as really interesting this because I thought, well, this is the root of the problem. Because when I look back at my own

relationship with my head or my, you know, toxic thoughts,

have you heard people in meetings laughing about or am I on the way to the meeting? My head was telling me looks, Ryan said. Ever laughs about, you know, what their head was telling them?

Now ask the right attitude because you're treating your head, which is the alcoholism or the disease, as unlike crazy goblin in the corner, some kind of vampire gerbil in its little wheel, going round and round and round with its fangs but having no power, having no, there's no substance. It's just, it's just rubbish, just rubbish.

Whereas this chat is mesmerized by my head was telling me this, my head was telling me that.

And I thought I said to him, do you think your head is your higher power? And he said, yes, there you go. So when his head would tell him to go to a A, he'd go to a A, and when his head would tell him to drink, he'd drink.

So

the reason this is important is because

with this kind of path, which I've called good dog, bad dog, it looks like someone is doing what you're asking them, but they're not. They're doing what they have judged. You've suggested something, they've judged it to be the right thing. So they're doing it because they judge it to be the right thing, not because you've suggested it. Whereas the ideal thing with a sponsor I found is is to do what my sponsor suggests. Not because I think it's a good idea, but because he suggested it and I trust him.

And Clancy's description and sponsorship is one of his descriptions is to take actions you don't believe in because the person who's suggesting them is doing better than you.

The the other

path, and I'm going to finish fairly shortly, I think is, is what we might call pseudo surrender. And this is where people are very good at some things,

but not good at not good at others. I've talked about this a little bit already, overcompensating in some areas.

So my friend Sarah, who is now a clinical psychologist at one of the big teaching hospitals in London. But she was,

she got sober same age as me, same year. She used to wake up covered in cold pasta. That was one of her drinking stories naked, covered in cold pasta. What a sight that must have been. Anyways, clinical psychologist now,

but she was good at talking and analysing. This is her own storage, doesn't mind me telling. She's good at talking and analysing, but she wasn't very good at leaving the house

and she found Janet. Janet was Sarah's sponsor and she phoned Janet one day. Janet, I'm too frightened to leave the house. Then she reeled off all the diagnosis for why she was too frightened to leave the house.

Like sort of Scouts badges. It's not that they're not real. I mean, you know, anxiety is anxiety. But the question is how, how, how are we going to treat it?

And what Janet suggested. Now I'm not condoning this, I'm just reporting what happened. Janet said I'll only talk to you if you call me from the phone box at the end of the road and I'll know as it'll be a different number than the number you're currently calling on. And I can see the number you're currently calling on. She put the phone down. Sarah called her back from the home number and Janet said that's your home number.

Click.

So Sarah got up the courage, took a while, got up the courage, and called from

the phone box at the end of the road, panting, panicking. But she did it. She did the one thing she didn't want to do. She trusted Janet, and she wanted to talk to Janet.

And Janet said, how was it? And Sarah said it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And Janet said, you've learned a very valuable lesson about fear there, haven't you? The story in the big Book about precisely that, about walking around the block.

So the point of that story is sometimes

the sticking point is the action that the person absolutely doesn't want to take.

And once that action starts being taken, the whole thing starts to roll

and progress starts being made.

So with this sort of pseudo surrender where like people are super surrendered in areas AB and C, but not in areas DE and F to bear down hard on areas DENF because that's where the problem is. The good, the like the compliance on the other side is, is the distraction. That was what was done with me.

I got lots of stories myself about the the sponsor zoning and on the last thing I want to do,

making it my number one priority. And that's been incredibly important for my recovery. And that the ability, the reason this is related to relapse is the ability to do the last thing that you want to do because someone else has asked you to do it. Someone you trust has said this is going to be in your best interests. That's ultimately the thing that muscle is, the muscle that you need to exercise to be able to not do what

alcoholic head is telling you to do. And that's why it's so important to Start learning how to act against one's own impulses.

So there we go. That's all. That's all I've got on that. I'm going to hand it back to you, Dan, masquerading as Alistair this evening to see if we can field some questions.

OK, Thanks, Tim. The meeting is now open for questions for Tim, which can be done by the raised hand function. Or just give me a wave and come in and ask him.

Sam, I mean.

Has done nobody. Thanks Tim, that was really helpful. Does any of what you said change when you apply it to different addictions like sex and love?

Muted. There we go. OK, so for the backup recording, I'm repeating the question for the sake of the recording. So does everything apply also to the other addictions? Let me see. There's a note I need to read. I don't know where he's put it now. OK,

so my relevant experience is is particularly with the the the the slot topics. I know a lot less about food,

but I've worked. I've got slight issues myself and I've worked with a lot of people over the years

and and there are different, there are differing views on this. So be aware that there are different there there, there are differing approaches.

I've seen people with the S stuff, with the SLA stuff

try really, really hard and the abstinence

not achieved 100% straight away.

And lots of my fried and a lot of people in the food fellowships

who say a similar thing that with some people they take they start taking all the action promptly and

the food stuff clears up straight away. Other people, it's patient progress over weeks or months before abstinence, full abstinence is fully maintained. The latter is the case for me with the

with the slaw issues that it was, it was patient progress. Even with like full throttle action,

I found myself slipperier than other people. But I know, I know there are other answers without people in this right. I know there are other people in this room who've got more extensive experience on the on the S stuff than than me. But I think the same general principles are certainly for me, the same general principles apply when it comes to the reasons for relapses. It's it's all the same reservations

behind it.

Angus,

Hi. Thanks. Thanks Tim.

I'm working with someone who is slipping a lot

and I can't. I can't. I guess you've kind of talked about it, but I guess how would you approach a situation with when I say where I say, you know, at some point you need to be willing not to slip or willing to stay sober. I mean, I can't and I can't give you that, he says.

Bron Paulus, it's unpaolous. You know, what can I do? I'm a little bit stumped. I guess it's kind of understanding what are the kind of the drivers in terms of the step 0123, but how would you approach kind of conversation like that? OK. So that's

that's a very good question. So this question of powerlessness over the relapse, the the line,

which I think is very helpful, is that we're powerless but not helpless.

And so there isn't a contradiction there. What powerlessness means is that left to my own devices, I have no choice but to drink

or engage in whatever the behavior is.

The whole point of AA is that your powerlessness remains, as it were, sort of permanent state. But with the help that's provided, it's sort of placed in this structure of assistance

of the program, the principles, the power behind it, IE the higher power and then the people, the four PS.

And

with the combination of the entire fellowship, the program, the principles, and God, anything should be possible.

So there's a there's a there's a little bit of a danger of hiding behind the powerlessness of Step 1. The examination of powerlessness

takes place in a context where there is no help available.

That's what demonstrates the powerlessness

with my own. There are a couple of other points I want to make about slippiness with the slaughter stuff as it is the one of the reasons it's slightly different

in my view. This is just a this is very much a personal view. I may change my mind even later tonight, but

the effect of the chemical and electrical effect in the brain of

a fantasy which flips through your mind or if you're walking

along the street and you're as you were triggered by someone looking at you in a particular way. The chemical rush is is it's almost as though you're creating a slip itself inside your with your own brain chemistry.

Now with alcohol and and cocaine is a good example actually that they

Nora Volkov. You can look her up later with Avi Think Nora Volkov, Mexican neuroscientist.

She talks about an experiment where they showed cocaine addicts footage, film footage of people taking cocaine in a kind of cocaine taking environment. And they measure the brain waves, what's going on in the brain. And then they did the same with cocaine addicts

taking cocaine, and they discovered almost no difference

in the brain function between the two. So that watching the film of people taking cocaine was causing the same changes in brain chemistry that taking cocaine was doing. Which is a little bit like the Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being able to turn into Mr. Hyde without taking the potion. Now with alcohol,

I think a lot of the slips that I had started off with the fantasy about it and it's it's, it starts in the brain and you're kind of setting yourself off.

My experience with this last off is it was far more instantaneous than it was with alcohol. You kind of had to work at it with alcohol, but with the last off, boy is it quick.

But but here's the thing. I think I always set myself up by never having fully accepted

the

value. Valuelessness of the acting out there was still part of me which still believed there was some value in the acting out that I was missing out on something.

And that's the thing that I was able to actively work on is to get rid of the notion that I was by abstaining from XY and Z. Everyone's at a list is different in in Slough abstaining from XY and Z that getting rid of the idea that I was actually missing out on something.

And this applies as much to the the intrigue, the flirting that the the the sort of toxic romantic relationships as it does to to sex. It was,

and it was in fact the latter which was more more my my downfall.

But I had to really see that there was nothing

that there was. There was no good at the bottom of the the genies flask,

there was nothing there. Whilst I still believe there was some good in there. I was opening myself up to those fantasies and then I was opening myself up to relapse. So

now The thing is, one's got to be

sort of gentle with people. I think particularly with the slower stuff, I've seen people

actually in much more baffled desperation with the slaughter stuff that I have, even with alcohol, because people can't work out, they can't find the reservation. And so I try and be as a sort of slow and gentle with people as possible about helping them find what the reservation is

with the Alcoholics. The reservation is it's not buried deep, it's just pretty light drinking and that's it.

Or there's some some event they can't some event from the past that they that they can't bear to face. So I don't. Angus, does that answer your question at all?