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

That what

to set the time for the meeting. I will read an extract from page 164 of the Big Book

still, you may say, but I will not have the benefit of contact with you who write this book. We cannot be sure. God will determine that. So you must remember that your real reliance is always upon Him. He will show you how to create the fellowship you crave. Our book is meant to be suggestive. Only we realize. We know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order.

Obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past, give freely of what you find, and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you. Until then,

the topic of tonight's meeting is what? Tonight's meeting is part four of working step 12 with a Swansea and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim. Evening everyone. Semi alcoholic.

There are a couple of topics I'm going to start. I want to get them out of the way

because that's sort of deadly.

So there are a couple of outside issues

which come up when you're sponsoring people and the first one is the issue of psychotherapy and the second one is the issue of psychiatry. And I'll deal with these separately

now.

I don't know about anyone else, but

when I was growing up, various people tried to help me

and when they couldn't, they always said the same thing. When they ran out of things to say, they'd say I think you should see a therapist. Now what this means is I don't have a solution, but there is a solution somewhere. And The thing is about therapy, we talk about it in recovery a lot, is there is a single thing, but it's like, say you need a solution. Because it

covers such an incredibly broad range of things from psychologists with psychotherapies, columns of behavioral therapies are very, very targeted

interventions and there are all sorts of skill levels, different experiences, but therapists different experiences. But full step recovery is not very styles and very positive. So it doesn't really mean anything to say I'm in therapy or I'm thinking about going to therapy or you should go to therapy. It has it has made like saying you have you have a problem, you need a solution because it's too broad the time.

But one phenomenon which is very common where where it interacts when I have no opinion on one can't have an opinion on therapy per SE because it's such a broad topic. It doesn't mean anything.

One has to know what what therapy one's talking about. And I've certainly had therapy a number of times and and subjectively speak and there have been some benefits. I'm not antis talk, but where it comes up, where it comes up very regularly with sponsees is

now there are some people I've I've known who Swansea's who've gone into therapy to deal with particular childhood questions

or particular behavioral problems, particular phobias or particular

compulsive behaviors.

But what often happens with sponsees is they'll experience a malaise of some sort, particularly when they're part way through the process. So part way through step four or part way through step 8 or part way through step 9, and someone suggests therapy without going into any detail about exactly what sort of therapy or why or what aspect of the problem,

but it's just sort of waved as the sort of magical solution over there. And is there one that, you know, everyone is necessarily missing out if one isn't, if one isn't having it? And, and I shouldn't really say this, but I'm going to, I've been to a number of meetings where the topic of the meeting becomes, so the chair mentions therapy and then the topic of the sharing is

A. A is great because it gets you physically sober. But the point of a A is to enable you to go to therapy. And that's the real answer.

And I've been to meetings where you sort of suggest that you've done the AA program that solved your problems and there's lots of head shape at the assertion that a, A has anything to offer other than keeping you physically sober. It's very disconcerting. I don't tend to go back to those meetings, but they do some round here. So I've been to which you like that.

Now the question with obviously it's up to the sponsor what they do, but I think there are a couple of considerations. There are a couple of areas of considerations which I give sponsees when they start to sort of

when they want to wave the magic therapy ones to treat their whatever their condition is. And the first one if you are going to, I don't know about anyone else experience with therapy. It's very expensive unless you can get some sort of funding. You know, I've paid up to £150 an hour for therapists,

money well spent in some cases, but nonetheless, it's a big financial commitment. One wouldn't spend, you know, 5 to 10,000 lbs on the kitchen without doing some due diligence about what one's letting oneself in for. So what I suggest to people is exactly what I did when I undertook the therapy project to solve some specific questions,

which is what is the problem you're seeking to solve? How have you determined that therapy is the answer? What therapy? What are the qualifications of the therapy?

What is the method? What is the outcome? What does success mean? How do you measure progress towards success? How long does it go on for before you understand whether or not it's working? It's a big financial decision. The questions one would ask if one were buying a car or or or or, as I said, having a kitchen redone. And what's very interesting is

a lot of friends of mine who who've gone into therapy haven't asked any of those questions at all,

absolutely no idea what their lessons are. Then there might be single personal recommendation or they've got the number out of the directory, which suggests a sort of magical, magical thinking about it is though there are magical properties to everything within the category. But whereas in fact, there's one person in this meeting will know there are some very specific, very targeted strategies which are immensely successful

with really good evidence base. And,

and there are others which are very Contra and certain types of therapy which are very controversial where the evidence base is much weaker. What to say? The question to response is, do you know what why you're doing this and what you're letting yourself in for? And when I've questioned sponsors who are thinking about this, often the thinking has gone no further than this. Well, I don't feel very good and I'm a year sober now and Susan suggested it.

This is,

this is not solid thinking. This is wanting to wave a magic wand when you're already in a process. So the first one is to know exactly why what you're why you're doing, why you're considering something, what solutions you're considering, how you identify that therapy is a solution, what type of therapy what, what are the credentials, One of the testimonials from that particular therapist. I want to know what I'm getting myself into with things like that.

The second, the second question, and this is not often discussed.

I I've known a lot of people in recovery who see the problem, the entire life problem of the individual is essentially a psychological problem rooted in childhood experiences. Now, I don't know about anyone else. My experience is that that that's a fact. I'm not saying it's not a fact, but I think I've identified in my life

eight areas of problem

and each has a different type of solution and therapy was the solution to one of them, namely the psychological. So there are all sorts of psychological quirks which

therapy very much helped with. So I've I've got a form of autism and when that was, it was informally diagnosed. It wasn't an autism specialist, but the therapist was experienced with people with autism and we. The diagnosis was in the form of if it looks like a duck and it quacked

rather than going through formal diagnostic writing. But the shoes fit and the approach she adopted was

very specifically aimed at looking at certain cognitive processes and working around those very tailored way. So very good example of a psychological problem. Another good example of a psychological problem a friend of mine had and a therapist was immensely helpful was being so dissociated he couldn't access any of his feelings

and a therapist in a few weeks managed to unlock everything and then that really let them that opened their counter worms. But you need the Step 4 needs. You need to start with the worms. Unless you've got the worms of resentment and fear and guilt and shame on the surface and visible, you've got nothing to work with. I'm sure you've had sponsors who say I don't present anyone, I'm afraid most person and it just means you've probably got someone just totally dissociated and a rather probing

can usually put pay to that in the So those are examples of psychological problems. People with PTSD as psychological problem with certain events are associated in the mind with certain traumatic events in the past and trigger the same response to those traumatic events of the past as though that happen right now. And I've experienced that myself.

And part of the help I've had from professionals on that is unpacking and unpicking those reactions and then and that ultimately helped to change it.

So it's not the psychological problems that cognitive distortions is. The other one, I've had friends who've been very much helped with psychotherapists, cognitive behavioral therapists specifically, who look at cognitive distortions like splitting and black and white thinking and catastrophizing and get people to memorize the checklist and learn to spot them and not buy into them and replacing the different types of thinking and, and, and, and so

all that's immensely helpful. So that's real

and true and good and helpful. But there's one aspect of my mind, another aspect of my life is social interaction, how I interact with other people.

And I've had huge problems in this area. How do you interact with sponsees? How do you interact with bosses? How do you interact with family? And so that the solution there comes my experience largely from finding people who are functional in those areas

and saying what do you do? How do you have dinner with your mother? Give me 5 tips. I will write them down. So learning how to when you've got a boss who shouts, how you handle it? How do you handle HR departments? How do you behave in interviews? How do you deal with the council? What How do How do you

an A? A is wonderful with these because it gives you a full room of people who can say, well, this is how you deal with

the housing authorities. This is how you deal, this is how you deal with the people at the job centre. Social interaction.

And I know some therapists will focus on this, but there's not the primary focus of therapy in my experience to examine very closely how one interacts with with some therapists. It is, I'm sure, but it's not my experience therapy various forms of many years it it's social problems. The question of do you have friends? What do you do with those friends? What type of friends are you picking?

You've got the social, you've got the practical.

All sorts of problems in my life I thought were psychological but were actually entirely practical.

I have all sorts of psychological problems stemming from not having a job and not having any skills which enabled me to get a job. And what I needed in this case was the experience of people that knew how to get me onto the job ladder.

And this is not the job of therapy. Physical things.

If you've got a dietary problem, you go to a dietician. If you got a sleep disorder, you go to a sleep disorder specialist. There are lots of physical things. So we've got the we've got the practical, the physical, the social, the psychological, and one needs to go to the one's got to identify what the problem is and find the appropriate person to solve that, whether it's inside a a or outside.

And then that we haven't even got onto the main ones. There is a moral problem, a spiritual problem, a philosophical problem and a theological problem. So to go from the back of your relationship to God, your conception of that's the theological site, your conception of your position in the universe and your relationship with the rest of the universe is a spiritual question. Who are you? Are you a body or are you a spirit? Where are you on those on the

between the two,

it was very broadly that the spiritual question you've got the you've got the moral question of are you for yourself or are you for your contribution to the world.

What we've got is we've got morals that philosophical. So there are also philosophical questions which have been immensely relevant. Now, if my problem my a lot of my I've had problems in all eight areas, and part of my difficulty over the many years

that I struggled in recovery was going to one type of practitioner when my problem resided in an entirely different area.

Hanging out with assholes, sorry to pardon my French, is a social issue and I I had terrible problems in my 20s which actually stemmed from some of the people I was hanging out with. No wonder I was so on

until I diagnosed what the problem was I couldn't solve.

The same with lots of physical things. It's amazing how many people in recovery think there's something wrong with them spiritually when they don't have a regular

going to bedtime, getting up time. So they're constantly, you know, if you look at your own experience in jet lag, even two or three hour jet lag, people that work night shifts are all over the place. And a lot of people in recovery will have a terrible relationship with sleep and exercise and then be and then think that there's a psychological, maybe it's a physical form. Maybe sort out the low hanging fruit first.

So

I think that that that to sum this all up,

what one's got to do is find the appropriate solution to what the problem is. You've got to find out what the problem is first. And the trouble is with early recovery, first two years, three years is until you've done the steps, everything is a mess. So there is no way of really diagnosing specific things that are wrong. One's got to sort of do the general sweep of the steps and sort out the basic things like like sleep and diet and exercise and

regularity and and rhythm in one's life before one can see what's left open.

And also, and to go back to the first point, to exercise due diligence about if one goes through outside, expensive outside practitioners and if so, how to go about it rather than treating it as a magic wand. So don't have any questions about that whole area,

James.

Thank you, Tim. Yeah, my question is, it's kind of related to this and it's this is the question when a sponsee is going to meetings maybe or have things been through a treatment centre or through a therapy process and is getting or is jumbling up stuff they're hearing in treatment centre etcetera. Or therapists with

the 12 step recovery program as outlined in the a a big book, how to keep it on track if you like do would you suggest that we just that it's useful to just

keep bringing it back to the process in the steps or spend time discussing alternative or or or differing views of causes and solutions in recovery or to just keep bringing it back to the big book? Can you give me an example of where the two things in your experience can conflict? OK, so working so this is off the top of my head example. So working with Sponsee, going through the

through step one and having to unpick the OR to to to look at the idea of just

not drinking and going to meetings in and of itself is not the solution to alcoholism. Because that's what they've been told maybe previously, that that's the problem and that's the solution. We just don't drink and go to meetings. Then everything should be fine and having

I think you've got two distinct issues there. The first issue which which is maybe a sort of therapy specific issue

is and this is this is a very, very difficult one to what a difficult one to resolve.

And I'm, I'm going to try and say this as respectfully as possible, but you know me, you know the chances of me being able to do that, frankly, remote.

There is a current in society at the moment where if you feel it, it is real

and it's happened.

I was having a conversation with John, I've told you this story before. I was having a conversation with Jonathan a few months ago where I was losing. And so to press my points, I, I thought in a winning way. I said, but it's my lived experience. And he said yes, but that doesn't mean it's real. Now the tightrope here is

to acknowledge the feelings are obviously real. I mean, if you feel something, you are feeling something. But the notion that if you felt something, it is an authentic reflection of what has happened,

that's the contentious news. And sometimes people are not open to being challenged on their perception of what happened.

The Katie Parker puts this very well. She and she's even rougher than I am,

but I remember her at state line many years ago, someone she she sort of quotes a sort of apocryphal conversation with the sponsee, whether the sponsee I says, says I want to talk about my feelings and the the and shears. The sponsor says your feelings, your feelings come from a delusional mindset. Let's talk about delusion

now. There are kinder ways of doing it than that. So I think 1 acknowledges the feelings and it says, but are you open to challenging your own perception and interpretation of what happened? Are you willing to separate the physical events which happened in the material world from the story that you the narrative you told yourself about

now?

I never got the narrative challenge

in with outside practitioners. In fact, the narrative got. We worked with the narrative as though the narrative was the reflection of reality. So that's an example of where you're doing something which is entirely different.

Sometimes I've had sponsors who've been encouraged to get angry with and express that anger towards and confront friends and relatives with, with what they perceive to be their poor behaviour. Unfortunately, this just goes against the program. So now I'm not saying

the program is right that that practitioner is wrong, but there are times when you have to say to to the sponte matey, you're going to have to pick a horse to ride because you can't ride these two horses. I've had lots of sponsors who perfectly successfully had therapy married the two it as I've said in previous talk, what you don't want to do is to be reconciling to So what I get people, people at the hearing therapy. So you leave the therapy over there. We're going to,

we're gonna do this just as a stand alone thing. It is not my job to, if you want to do 2 systems at 1:00, that's fine. But you're going to have to do the reconciling. I'm not here to be played off against the therapist and vice versa or to reconcile the two systems. You're just going to figure that one out on your own. And people manage people if they're, if they want to, they find a way so that that's sort of a conflict between therapy, for instance, or other practitioners and,

and a a you get a similar thing with religion,

by the way, exactly the same type of confidence.

What you're talking about more specifically there, though, however, is having to unpick before you actually build up. And the simplest way to do it is to and I

sponsee who should remain and nameless many years ago who went whatever you said they would say back, but you said two weeks ago, but I heard sober and Shoreditch, but my last sponsor said but I heard on television. But Judge Judy said like like constantly citing what someone else has said by even using what you said back against you. And that won't do. You just have to know.

This is where the set aside prayer comes in. So you say everything you've learned so far. Lots of it is great because it's got you to where you are now. So Gray,

but what we're going to have to do is just quietly set the whole thing aside. Start with a blank sheet of paper. Anything you've previously learned which is true and helpful will be returned to you as part of this process. So you're not going to lose anything by setting aside. What you're going to do is put it on the shelf and leave it there. And then when you get to the end of the process, you can look back at the shelf and say, what can I reclaim from previous

processes or learnings or lessons? And sometimes as you're in the process, sometimes things fall into place that you learned before. But what you have to, you have to clear the ground first. If, if the pot is full, you can't put anything in the pot. So you need to clear that, clear the pot 1st. And then you'll have absolutely, if they're willing to do that, you'll have absolutely no trouble. Sarah Rivka,

hi. Yeah, thanks. Well, first, you already just answered part of my question, but the other part of the question is

like, it was very interesting to hear you describe the different kinds of therapies, you know, different things that might be therapy might be helpful for. But I'm just wondering like

I don't want to say why you said like, why were you saying all that?

Like is it, is it so that I, is this information so that if I'm sponsoring somebody

's you know, like, is this for if somebody comes to me and says, should I go to a therapist and then I should then I could, you know, say back to them similar things to what you said? Or is that just stuff that, you know, like I just wasn't sure exactly what I'm supposed to do with that?

The reason why

is because I've had extensive experiences over many years. I don't really have them anymore because I sort of solved the problem before I get there where people are doing very well and then they join some other external program, maybe a religious program, or they adopt A therapy approach and the a A activity dwindles

the stuff they're learning. Therapy can sometimes undermine their trust in a A

there's there is only a certain number of hours in the week. And so especially if people are working and they have other commitments, necessarily it's going to double or travel the time it takes to get through the steps, particularly if they're given lots of homework

and they're trying to adopt two, often two entire world views at the same time. And what happens is they can't adopt either fully,

and if they drink again, they may die. So this is a very important question.

What are you going to? I've had honestly, I've had it the other way around. I've had sponsees who's or people very newcomers who's PTSD is so

extreme frankly, and my feeling is that unless they get the psychiatric and psychological psychotherapeutic health first, they won't be able to do the a a program they need. They need to be brought back to reality before they can the the the the a as measures can be of much use. So go to meetings,

fine, but maybe let's maybe go and sort some of that stuff out before you do any really detailed stuff in the steps. Maybe do

you know, get a sort of daily program in place, but let's not go anywhere near your childhood until you've had it looked at by by a psychotherapist. It's because so often when people are trying to do both at once, they do neither properly and it, it can destroy their, their ability to recover.

And that's why it's such a critical thing. If it's going to be done, it should be done diligently and carefully and in response to a specific situation, not waving a magic wand and that's that. So this is not to interfere with their processes to it's to encourage them to take maximum responsibility for making sure that what they're doing is deliberate and thought through. So you're not guiding them to do it or not to do it. You're giving them the tools to make an informed

decision about what they're doing. Does that make sense, Oracle

Yeah, Yeah, it does. And I, I just, I know that sometimes I've had the question put to me by a sponsee who's having a hard time, and they'll say to me, do you think I need therapy? And what I really think that they need to do is to take some of the suggestions that I've been given that been giving them and like to actually do them.

But therapy seems to be

an easier, softer way. I'm not talking about somebody who's like, you know, suicidal or freaking out or something. I'm talking about just it's people who don't really, you know, seem to be

doing the, the their, their a homework and it's just frustrating. Like, yeah, go ahead and see a therapist. But then what do you want from me? I don't know. So that's a very, that's very helpful because that's a very concrete situation.

My response in that situation is you've already started something. Why not finish the thing you've started and then see if you still have a problem because you haven't tested yet whether a A is going to work on this. Unless you complete the first nine steps and live in the 1011 and 12 for a good couple of years afterwards, it takes two or three years after completing the first nine steps to get a real feel for what effect it has. It doesn't take straight away. It doesn't

everything up straight away. There's a lot of patience with this. Even Doctor Bob craved alcohol for a number of years.

So. So I think that's the response. That's the response there. I've had therapists who give me lots of homework to do. Now, if they're not, if they've come to a A and they're not doing the homework, the question is, if you go to a therapist, will you do their homework?

Why do you think you'd be doing their homework when you're not doing the AA? And that's a really legitimate question to ask. So is this, are you doing this because you think it's going to be more effective? Or are you doing it as a way of avoiding what's in front of you here? So I think there's some very serious questions when when you've got when you've got someone who's going full throttle in a A and there's stuff that's just not shifting. Absolutely. You know, you've got to diagnose what's wrong and find a either find a solution within

the world of spirituality, the world of religion, the world of therapy, whatever. But you can't test, you can't diagnose something when the acute problem has not been sorted out.

Seamus, I think you were next.

Let me go unmuted. Thank you, Tim. Hello, everybody. Yes, I I think I'll ask this question by way of a case study. So it's something I have in mind who

when I first met him, I kind of picked him up from another sponsor who had, who had drunk. So the guy was the guy was drifting by the time I met him. He had a history of, of interludes in his drinking, as did I actually, it was part of my history as well. Time off, six years off in my case and quite a long time off in his, during which time in his case he had become depressed and he had sought help with his depression. He'd gone to

an expensive psychiatrist I think, and being treated, and what had been treated with was pills,

I don't know exactly what, but sort of fairly heavy duty antidepressants which seem to have done a trick.

And then there was the drinking. So he started drinking again. And for that he came to me. He worked the steps. He did what I thought was a fairly creditable Workman like job on, on, on step four and seen to be getting the and seemed to be getting the results.

I think he wanted to stop drinking more because of what happened when he drank than for any more fundamental existential reason. He was getting consequences that were bad for his family life, for his professional career. It was that kind of thing.

He felt that he needed to stop and we provided him with a way of stopping.

After a few years of this, he started drinking again intermittently and has never really succeeded in stopping. That also has another bout of so-called depression.

Back to the psychiatrist. Change the medication, all right now kind of thing. Incidentally, I want to get to ask the medication question up front. I'm always kicking myself thinking, oh God, I wish I'd asked them what pills they're on because, you know, you can bet your bottom dollar, but half them are on some kind of pill. And, and I wish I knew that. But there's a final strand of this which I've it's just been surfaced actually by something that you said, which is religion.

So the guys also got religion and he's got the kind of religion where if enough people get together

and pray to God, God kind of rearranges the universe in their favor in response to lobbying. It's a bit like in Bruce Almighty where, you know, a lot of people pray to win the lottery and Bruce gets fed up and he presses but yes to all button on the on the prayer management system is it's that kind of view of yeah, prayer as an exercise in in lobbying the the almighty.

I feel sorry for this guy, but I don't really know what to say beyond what I've said already, which is trying to draw attention to the, you know, the nature of

prayer and our relationship with the divine within this within this program and trying to communicate by 1 means another. I don't think that oppression is a separate problem kind of like over here, but actually part of the same problem.

One problem needing one solution rather than two problems needing several, several solutions. So it's kind of like a big question mark. What would you do faced with the situation like this?

If you want to try and help this guy out of the mess he's in,

that's a very, very helpfully put scenario.

I've actually got parked as a separate question, psychiatry because it's an entirely different topic than psychotherapy,

because it's it's a it's a medical question and then you've got the question medication as well. So I'm I'm parking the psycho, the psychiatric medical side of it just for the moment.

CS Lewis talks very interestingly, I think it's in near Christianity, about the case of two men who don't want to fight in the First World War with and have got terrible psychological blocks against being soldiers essentially.

And both of them

go and see us a psychiatrist or a psychologist or someone to help them with these psychological plots.

And both of them are have these psychological blocks resolved and removed. And one of them says, this is marvelous. Now I've got my psychological blocks removed. I can fight for my country.

And then the second one says, well that's great. Now I've now I've got those blocks removed, I can, I can be more adept in avoiding fighting for my country. I'm now much more in control of myself and

how the psychological question is a different question in the moral question.

Now obviously, depression is widely considered to fall squarely within the domain of psychology and or medicine.

I'll tell you something, anecdotally,

living an immoral and materialistic life

made me depressed. Quite aside from other factors. I've had periods of my life where I was, I would be very, very spiritual,

doing lots in a a sponsoring lots of people,

doing all of all of the right stuff. And over a period of time my behaviour became selfish. I started to harm other people through deceitful action and I became very materialistic and basically money, romance, sex, appearance and I became profoundly depressed as a result. Profoundly depressed.

I think it's true to say that.

So in my case, and that's not, that's not the only pause. Physical things can do it as well. Physical illness has done it for me in the past as well. I, I had very, very bad depression when I was growing up. Well, I've discovered in my case is that there was a strong moral and spiritual component in my depression and also a philosophical one, that my philosophical attitude towards the universe when those things, when the social, when the practical problems which are not

faced, you put all of those together.

My first sponsors that people know me for quoting is my first sponsor who was a doctor, actually,

Doug, I said to him, I'm depressed and said you're not depressed or life is depressing. If I lived your life, I'd be depressed as well. So although it's very clear and it's very well documented, you can go and read it on Wikipedia that they're all organic forces of depression. And certainly it takes on a life of it. It can take on life of its own. It becomes a self propagating.

Phenomenon, you know, where people will avoid other people, they'll retreat from life and that will actually exacerbate the depression and it becomes and all sorts of things happen with diet and sleep and that makes things worse. So I think you've got two separate questions with with extreme psychological conditions, whether they're anxiety or depression or panic attacks, which I suffered very badly from

is you've got the acute treatment of the problem and then identification of the underlying cause.

And

if you take someone with a good childhood, this is my observation of friends of mine in a, a who report this, they reported themselves a good childhood, no psychological Hangouts, but years of living in a way which is dysfunctional from a material, a practical, a physical, a social, the philosophical, religious and moral and a spiritual point of view. And now you will generate the same

tradition as someone with a very traumatic childhood.

They present the same way. So

in my case, I only worked out where the depression came from by addressing not just the psychological, but addressing those other areas, the practical, the social, the physical, the moral, the spiritual, the philosophical, religious, until the jigsaw puzzle. As I dealt with those one by one, some things called the depression to lift more quickly than others. I thought, aha, well that was a large component of it.

So I always encourage people to look at everything, to look at this holistically, not to treat one asphy like if I pray it will go away. If I do service, it will go away. If I get enough exercise, it will go away. If I examine my childhood, maybe, but maybe there are all of the areas involved that need to be looked at. So to look at everything and treat it as a 10 year project, not a 5 minute project, and be systematic about examining each of those eight areas,

inventorying each of those eight areas and finding people who are super functional

in each of those errands

and to copy what they're doing and see if that helps. And so it's really empirically that I've done this. It's not based on any sort of theory. It's simply by trying things and discovering that they work. And I was someone that was told in my teens that I would likely I'm the sort of person that that would probably be ill forever and have to be under

under the medical psychological supervision forever because my case was so extreme. So this is not coming from someone that sort of tripping through the tulips their whole life and is looking askance at people with entirely different problems. This is from someone that's been in that position when I was at school. I was on suicide watch for five years where

people were charged secretly. I only discovered something secretly with surveying me, surveilling me and writing reports which then collated weekly incentive my parents.

My mother, of course, has wiped your memory of this. She said, oh, you had a unique childhood which is conveniently forgotten all of this. So this is this is this is as I say, not coming from a Pollyanna ish attitude. It's come from having to to really knock on every possible door to solve the problem. Depression, anxiety, planet attacks and other disagreeable manifestations. Do you want to say something about the psychiatry question, which is even thornier? Harry, do you want to

with your question? Yeah, it's a bit of a spoke off. Should I just go with it though?

Yes. OK. I'll take that as a yes. OK. So the question was,

so someone's got something of a program

you describe and then let's say they they they're not feeling, they're feeling unhappy. And then therapy comes up as a potential magic fix for this. But what you made me think of was often my sponsees will, rather than say I'm going to go see a therapist, they'll say I need to go through the work again. So I don't know if you've got that as a topic to come up like when what are the guide rails for coming back onto the work? And

because like all of them have just almost immediately wanted to do it again, which I don't know if reflects reflects my sponsorship,

I'm going to do that in about two minutes time. I'm going to say two things about psychiatry.

I've had lots of sponsors who, you know, My first question I ask is, are you taking your medication?

You know, I'm not one of these people, you know,

they're off even recovered. So you shouldn't take things I'm the other way around. If they've been, you know, if they're on antipsychotics, I want to be, you know, this is my first question. Are you still taking your antipsychotics? What the one thing I would say about there are there is a type of alcoholic who will treat them and I've sponsored them sometimes who treat themselves essentially not as human beings, but as chemistry sets. So at every problem is a chemical is looking for a chemical solution.

Now I don't know whether that's the case or not. What I do observe is that people with that profile

struggle with a not drinking bit of the program

on a regular basis.

Doctor Paul O is great on this subject.

So there is a, there is a question with the psychiatrist hunting, which is a whole hobby that some people engage in, that they're constantly looking for new psychiatrists and new diagnosis and new prescriptions. I don't know and I don't know. There was nothing about that area. What I observe is it very often combined with the resistance to the program.

So it's looking for something which is in. So the purpose is not to learn how to live well. The purpose is to feel better from whatever means achieve that end is fine. Now, I don't think that's a bad approach, it's just not my approach. And so if people's approach is simply they just want to feel better, they don't care how

totally welcoming a, a do whatever you want. But that I, I approach things very, very differently. My job is to learn how to live well and have my emotional state as a consequence

of that. And I think there's a fundamental physical, there's a fundamental philosophical question now, and it's good to have a sponsor you're aligned with on that. I don't think it's a right or wrong answer to that philosophical question,

but it is important for the sponsor and sponsor to be aligned. Otherwise you're just going to have terrible arguments the whole time. I will say one thing. There was an A A There's an A a member in Bristol who is a philosopher.

His job is he is afraid. He gets paid remarkably being a philosopher,