The Palisades Speaker Meeting in Palisades, CA

Let's welcome today's speaker, Russell.

I could hold it, maybe. No, there's two of them that get complicated. Don't complicate life,

keep it simple. I'm Russell, an alcoholic.

Patty, thank you for taking this meeting. Thank you, Siddiqui, for asking me to do this thing. Welcome all the newcomers and people counting days and stuff and visitors and congratulations to all of you taking birthday cakes at that. Cake orgy was the phrase that was you and it was a cake orgy. And I never been to an orgy with cake involved before.

I would have some hygiene concerns.

This is an extraordinary meeting. I came here for the first time last week and it was immediately enchanted with the the musical component.

I don't think every any I've ever seen anyone told to wind up and fuck off in a more elegant manner.

Good work, Tim. Spectacular.

It's a good technique.

Those of you that are new, I remember when like, I first came to these meetings, I like how extraordinary I found it. And not in a good way, like not in a like, oh, this is salvation. I'm so grateful. You know, I don't want no part of this. I thought like that. I felt like my identity is very much been formulated around being outside of groups. So like anything where I'm invited to participate, I'm very, very suspicious

of that. And I thought means are weird in England. I'm from England, conservative England. Means ain't like that. No one plays a fucking piano in my country. Well done for not dying, well done for not drinking. We have another day

they've removed. We are not a glum lot.

This is a high density of characters in this room. Like I've been here once. I like this is like the fact is for me is like there's nowhere else in the world that I feel more embraced at home, at ease and loved and tolerated

than in like a a meetings. People like people. I don't know. People have clearly got time. I'm referring to you, Bob. I'm guessing you got some serious time goes Hey, don't fuck it up.

I was feeling nervous,

helpful,

extraordinary conglomeration of individuals. I thank God that you're not out there drinking and taking drugs. Sincerely, do this. Is this is the damage you could do with birthday cake?

Me, my favorite subject,

I, it was evident that there was a condition long before the substance. Like I as a little kid, I don't feel very happy. Like I hadn't obviously got no comparison of what other kids are feeling like, but I just thought I don't know. They seem to be kind of merry and joking around and that I felt like I was in some sort of a aquarium of misery, that everything was outside of myself and anything that I was after anesthetic from the get go. From day one, I wanted things to make me feel more at ease. You know, like sort of

like the way I ate chocolate and stuff as a little kid was not a normal way to eat chocolate. It was ritualized. It was excessive. I lied to myself about how much chocolate I would have. I had to conceal the consumption of chocolate

in it, like, and I would eat in a particular way, you know, like, and I didn't like eating it with other people around. So fucking chocolate, like those kids that eat chocolate slower than you to torment you. I would take that stuff very, very badly. The way I watch television was not a normal way to watch television. I will watch television obsessively, very, very close to the screen, staring at it, yearning, longing, in essence identifiable with me before I touched even a drop or took a toke

kind of yearning, longing, emptiness. I don't know where it came from at all. I'm really confused. I don't know, like that it was biographical. There are the elves in my story that used to would think, OK, yeah, that maybe that would give someone a problem. I'm, you know, from a single parent family. My mum was sick a lot at grew up in sort of spent time in different places. When I was a kid. I didn't have a good relationship. My stepfather, he was like, we were not allowed to call other people colleagues. Oh, it's bad form. But I tell you this, that man drank alcohol all of the time

and it was a type alcohol that's designed for people that live outside, you know,

should have come with a free umbrella. Like it's so, you know, like sort of like dense, like lager 12%, you know, like sort of see like, Oh my God. Like, you know, you drink that remote control on one thigh, extra strong lager on the other thigh, heavy atmosphere in that house. I don't like it there very much. As I was sort of adolescent, I began to eat in a kind of a peculiar way, like the whole like I'm still very embarrassed still, you know, to sort of I used to eat a lot and make myself throw up. You know, I did that for a while. Like

it's like actually, I always had to have some behavior that was a sort of event or an outlet. Always, always, there was always something thinking about it. Now, when I discovered, discovered, well, it's not, I'm not Christopher Columbus, but that guy, like pornography, like when I first encounter pornography, it was like it was the delivery of a new doctrine. Like it was a covenant, like it was a contract between man,

God. Like, oh, like I was, I was. I loved those things. I loved pornography. Sometimes I treated it in a somewhat discourteous manner, actually thinking about it.

But in my heart at least I, I felt for that stuff. I was devoted to it. I was a devotee. There's something in me. I'm an addict. I'm an alcoholic that is devoted to things that fixates and obsesses. And it happens so quickly. How like so one was, is with these tendencies, with this inclination

like that, when like the first time like that I drank. I drank to the point where I was prostrate, supine, flattened, battered, puking. Like the first time, like 14 years old. I have this thing of me, What happens if you keep doing it? What happens if you keep doing it

likes, like, as if I will find some new frontier who loves to drink and drink and drink and like, yeah. And then we're really ill and like the consequences would indicate, I think, to a rational person,

don't do that. But to me, they did not indicate that at all. I thought that's all right. That was, I was out of myself then. That was a little bit of respite, a little bit of relief from the relentless thinking, the sort of the torturous anxiety, so much of the body, not just some cerebral condition. It's not like I think I'm depressed or I think I'm unhappy. I feel it writhing in my guts, this lonely inadequacy. So

torturous and agonizing. I'll do anything. Anything

to get away from that feeling. Anything. I'm like a I'm a psychopath for it. I could become like a world class assassin, I'm sure if I was correctly directed, if someone could,

they could tap into that. There's nothing I won't do. There's nothing I won't do to not face that pain. Nothing the first time. So each each new aspect or emblem of my addiction, I agree it like a new Messiah for pornography. I fell upon my knees for marijuana or I worshipped it like every single new drug that I took. Oh, this one, this one's the solution until I got myself in a terrible predicament. Like with the stuff, to be honest. I mean like my sort of

using in the end, it was like like drinking the types of drink that like they would rather grandly in my country name them after Russian authors like Tolstoy and shit like, but it was not high quality gear that you were getting. It's sort of like it's one step away from cleaning the toilet that it would soon sully

and then with the then with the the drug and alcohol, the the drug theory. I mean, yeah, I was like a crack house using with homeless people. So like that. That's of course like if you travel around, I don't want giving scoring tips from the podium, but like

homeless people know where the drugs are, you know, and there was quite reliable if you're prepared to score on their behalf,

financially malleable.

And so I went to like, you know, like I guess, you know, all the children of God and none of us especially belong in those places, those places of violence and terror and mayhem down among the have nots where there are no real rules. Desperate, desperate people in pain like me, people like me. It'll do anything to get away from that feeling. But I did feel especially out of place. You know, I used to have kind of unusual haircuts and dress in a peculiar way. Not like now this is becoming leaves like this is.

And yeah, I'll be sort of using and scoring with, you know, like real serious people. I woke up in like all of us, like all of us woke up in very, very unusual places like like a time traveller in a way. I

used to think that how have I had even? Who are all of you? How did this happen

looking room so I once awoke in a room full of like refugees like honestly proper like people wearing like blankets and that in and I was naked as well. I was naked in bed with an elderly ladies true this actually happened. You know those the people that come to this meeting regularly will know that that is not an unusual thing to hear people do this kind of thing. Somehow, somehow these circumstances are contrived.

So like, it was a lot off. I used to get arrested a lot. I used to have a, a, what will I say? My view of my own ability to be engaged in physical combat was not in alignment with the reality of that. I'll get my talk myself into situations physically that was unable to fight my way out of.

It's quite difficult, embarrassing because I'm very good at the fighting talk. Very good. So I, I would get myself, the people think, oh, this guy's packing. And then they would discover that the really that I was just a sort of blood distribution unit.

I'm free.

I I used to get arrested a lot. A lot. Like sort of fairly regularly. Any given week I would be arrested there would be like my, my my using and drinking was scored not delightfully by Tim, but by the sound of crying women breaking glass and sirens like that is what it sounded like. Well, why are you doing this, Russell? What are you doing women?

Frantically tipping envelopes of powder and pouring bottles down toilets, crying. I'm like, well, that, that is. This is not going to be an epiphany

for me. What you've done there is created a brief financial inconvenience.

The toilet bowl is an Oracle for few,

huh?

So

I mention this, of course, because it was like a desperate, desperate state of affairs, and I didn't for a moment consider an alternative. Not for a moment. I couldn't conceive that there could be anything that could make me feel different except for a drink and drugs and those things. After a while they didn't even actually do it anymore. That's the thing that was a real kicker, is like the drinking drugs had stopped making me feel better. I'd stopped working as an anaesthetic. That stopped being an access to some

mind of escape. They were actually generating more problems than they were solving by quite a radical margin. I saw no alternative. My life became, you know, characterized by people departing, like people just like walking away from me with their hands up. Jobs lost, homes lost money lost things gradually leaving my life, deteriorating me sort of in the middle,

just holding very tightly to this disease, holding very tightly to this disease. I went to a couple of meetings and when I first went, I just thought now like people forced me to go, you know, I didn't, I ain't gay. I thought like, you know, if you're under 30 days and unless you're one of them people that's just blessedly has access to, you know, to the instant wonder available, like I just thought this is Nah, Nah. Like when someone first said to me, you've got to get just try and get to bed tonight without drinking or using, I just couldn't. It was an inconceivable and ridiculous

to me. It would just, I don't know. It was just like asking me to reverse time. It was like asking me for alchemy. It was not something I could do. Like, ow, it's 8:00, I've got to be awake ages one more. How am I going to get through that?

Eventually after a sort of one too many arrests and incidents and self harming and journeys in ambulances, like people found out, like I managed, like a lot of us, to consider people who knew me, knew what was going on. But like I have enough people to hold my life together. People I could get money off of, people I could blag lie to sleep at their houses.

One day someone significant in my life found out the degree of my addiction. They insisted that I meet someone like that. Ran a treatment facility, a 12 step treatment facility in my country and that And this bloke Chip Summers, the ridiculously named the like Chip Summers, a name that implies recovery quite strongly.

Summers it's gonna be OK. The person I used to score heroin off of was called Gritty.

The universe is communicating,

Chip Summers said. He asked me what I was drinking and using. I told him, he said you need to stop now or you will be dead in prison or in an institution within six months. I kind of thought that's not, that's still a relatively long time while we talk about that now.

I'll see you in June.

Then

there's someone like as though very close to me said, you know, like him, obviously we have to come here ourself. We need to come here on our own volition. Then the desire, you know, the only qualifications, desire to stop drinking and using. So like, but someone said to me, you know, I said, I'm not going to actually, I don't want to go. I don't want to go. And someone said, you're fucking going. Like someone made the decision for me and thank God they did. And there was a moment after I had like, you know, after I yielded my power. Well, the powerlessness hit me

like

with the first time in my entire life. It occurred to me, the thought, suppose you don't have to drink and take drugs every day. Just very quietly across my head like that. And then I just sort of, oh, all right. It wasn't like a Grand Road to Damascus epiphany. There weren't archangels and Clarion calls. It was just a very gentle murmur in my mind. They took me to this place, this place of delicate people, everyone sort of made of eggshell, brittle people, people loving, though, a lot of cuddles,

little hugs. I didn't like that. I was very fucking confused about what's going on with all of that stuff and began to work the steps. No one gets, as they say, as my sponsor says to me, no one gets clean in treatment. We all get clean in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous that this is was this where recovery is, where my recovery is.

Then when I like the one of the sort of statements that has remained was when someone heard that I'd got like a week clean, I was at Luck in a treatment centre. They'll give me this thing Subutex. They'll give me like a sleeping pill thing, which I took earlier and earlier each day.

In the end, had it at breakfast, because if if you're trying to stay awake on a sleeping pill is, you know, if you're denied all else, it's something and

all right, someone heard like, you know, like a mam. I said, Oh, I told this bird that you weren't drinking or using No more rust won't drink or take drugs no more. And she went, What does he do then, because that's like become my entire identity is who I was. And each, as I said to you, each one of those things, each one of those, the, the tentacles, the tendrils of my addiction, I clung on to steadfast and greeted like a new Messiah when something came into my life that actually worked.

So are you doing that like this thing when people say all we gotta do is not drink, attack drugs one day at a time? Well, he said no, just ridiculous. I suddenly became really introspective and circumspect. I was not like that when I was scoring. If someone give me a couple of bags and a couple of rocks and well, let's have a look at this. That stuff was in my body without any examination. This though, the 12? Well, Are you sure? What if it's a cult? These people are weird. What's with the piano?

Suddenly I'm a cultural analysis.

None of those things worked for me. What I recognize now,

extraordinary though it must seem, it does seem to me, is that through or that drug and alcohol use. I was actually trying to find something that I've found here, which I find here today, which is present in the sort of the gentle, mocking, straightforward, honest, beautiful, teasing, self obsessed behaviour of the people in these rooms is I get through this program, I get access

to God,

access to a higher power. And I think that's all I ever wanted was a release from myself, a knowledge that there was something bigger, something beautiful, something that connected everybody. And I didn't have the format for that. No one explained that to me. I need a very simple format for how to live in alignment with a higher power. I received it through this program. My sponsor is an extraordinary man in that, like, you know, now through the manner of my life, I get to sort of meet like

Swami's and priests and people that dress in curtains and turbans, live on mountains on a grain of rice. Then people are no good to me when it comes to dealing with this condition. When I've got a problem, when I feel ill, I ring up a bloke in West London called Alfie and like, he answers the phone anytime, day or night, always knows exactly what to say. Normally he's like laughing about something I think is really, really serious. Yeah. They sit down and I feel very hurt. I think I should do something. They're laughing at me.

Yeah, and they just hear him sort of gently chuckling. He's never once let me down. This is all the more extraordinary because he's my friend now, and I've seen that in his own life. The man's a fucking idiot,

Basmes indicated. As he always says,

you know, when two of us lot 2 or more of us lot are in communion, God is present. There's a higher power present. Now. As such, a mystical statement would not go unaddressed and unexamined were it not for it cannot be, Alfie. It cannot be. It's got to be coming from somewhere else. That man's a lunatic. So like, in a way, he's proof of God at last.

I just said in that beautiful documentary, My name is Bill W I'm sure most of you have seen it. The bit that affected me most profoundly was when Doctor Barbara reluctantly went to meet Bill W, the two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. For those of you sort of standing at the back wondering when to safely leave.

Who W new he had to talk to another alcoholic just intuitively newly needed to talk to another alcoholic who was going to drink again. He didn't what people weren't identifying. There was no way this was the inception of our fellowship. The two of the two men met. Bob had said in advance to his missus. I'm only going to stay there 15 minutes. Get Me Out of that room. Then the younger, the younger man, Bill W, spoke to the, you know, the doctor as a senior figure, a professional, and sat down and explained, without revealing his own status, the nature of Doctor Bob's disease.

And Doctor Bob said, Oh my God, you have it too, don't you? And

Bill said yes. And he said something passed between us, something passed between us.

And in my recovery, there's been so many times where I've felt the relief of like, ah, they're, they're in the same place as me. The biggest deceit, the treachery of my disease is that I'm in there alone, but it's just me on some precipice and the solutions it suggests death, destruction. Like, I mean, like I will think like, and still now I've got 10 years now I'm not so crazy as I used to be, but like the I cut the gravity of this,

the velocity of this disease, it will pull you back. Like I feel like I'm on top of the world sometimes, You know, it's only one day at a time and what you did today won't keep you sober tomorrow. But some days I think, come on, give me a badge or something. I did some really good shit.

The next day we begin again. I suppose that's why those myths exist. Like Sisyphus, who every day has to push that rock up the hill only to have to do it again the next day. Or like a Prometheus who is like on a Cliff edge, getting his guts picked out by an eagle for his guts to grow back. And that that we do only have one day at a time. The simple, fundamental principles of this program are inexplicably accurate, inexplicably profound. Like I said to you, I would prefer to get my God

dressed up in a curtain with a bindi. I really would. I'd really prefer it came from someone on a mountain up on high chant in Hindu verse. Not a couple of Americans in the 30s saying stuff like that's John Barley corn.

We was fond of whoopie parties.

That's where my God came from.

Antiquated Lexicon.

Dust Bowl America.

Someone said to me once belonging to Alcoholics Anonymous and not doing the steps is like checking into a 5 star hotel and sleeping in the toilet.

The steps of what makes this program like that like the first thing is let's not drink and take drugs. OK, let's try that. You know, that's that's terrifying cat poised above a bath horror of Oh my God, I can't drink and use. But I

the liberty and freedom that one day at a time I have access to is because of the steps. And my sponsor says to me there's no excuse There really is no excuse for any kind of unhappiness, any kind of resentment. What? One day at a time, one step at a time. As soon as I feel unhappy now I think, oh wow, what's this? You know, like let's do a quick sort of a step breakdown like the first three steps this program relatively easily. We're powerless. Can you do something about it? Yeah. Are you willing to hand it over a bit like those three steps can be done essentially by

Yeah.

So that's why step four comes as such a gruelling gut punch.

Write down everything that's ever happened and everything you've ever felt about everyone. Ever

tell somebody?

But now I've done that, you know, and my sponsor now, No, He knows everything. So when I'm like the next time and, you know, who knows when it will be the next time? I think I'm worthless and my life is pointless. And, you know, I might as well drink and use. I might as well be dead anyway. I've got something I can talk to. Goes now. You all right? You. I know everything about you. You're all right. You're all right. You're just alcoholic. You're just an alcoholic. Remember. Remember that thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah, That's that. Yeah. This is that you wanted to drink and use and kill yourself and being all grandiose about your own existence. This is that thing. Oh, thank you. Thank you,

said We're all out there, you know, said every alcoholic in the world. We're all out there still, you know, we're in recovery or not. Just chasing the buzz,

just looking for the next buzz. Will it be a woman? Will it be this delightful silken shirt?

For a moment. It was salvation for a moment,

and six and seven, the defects of character for me. It's our two minutes. Wrap this shit up, all right?

Anytime I'm unhappy, I've got to take responsibility for it. Like if I'm like, if I feel antagonized, like maybe Russell Days told me two minutes. Well, pride. So peace of centeredness, selfishness, intolerance, impatience, grieve. Got any sloth, lust, dishonesty, arrogant, bang, the whole works. They all arrive. Envy, jealousy as well. That is a lovely beard.

Yeah.

The 8:00 and 9:00 components, helping other people, that's when you really sort of like, that's where this thing gets holy. But when you have to sort of go back and make amends to other people and you can't, like, say, I'm really sorry, I've done all those things, but you fucking done that. There's just got to be pure, like, humility and grace. And 10:11 and 12:00 where I live, the better part of me lives today, a glorious way to live life, accounting for things as they happen, trying to maintain like I cultivate

a higher power within myself as much as I can see as long as them defects of character in my way. I can't be with God. I can't be in a line with my higher power. Relieve yourself of wondering whether or not there is. My sponsor says the only thing you need to know about God is you're not it. That's the what he tells me on a daily basis. My sponsor navigates me back when the defects of character blocked me from my higher power. I tilt to my sponsor. He navigates me back to that state of alignment. Then horrifyingly, we only keep what we have by giving it away. And that's such a weird realization that I'm only really happy

when I'm helping other people. I mean, I get like fleeting moments of pleasure elsewhere. I'm pretty far from the Saint. But when it comes to genuine happiness, it comes from like this program. Astonishing. How did they do it? How did they do it? It's astonishing so that there's no problem in my life that I can't improve by putting through this program. There's no problem in my life. I cannot fuck up and make worse by not using this program. The most mediocre incident can be amplified in a moment by my disease. Someone

for parking ticket. I can do A10 stretch off the back of that with a few choice words from my disease. Fuck you officer. What do you know that you know It can be all over everything in my like my life. I put it through the filter of this program because it gives me the access to a higher power that I believe I was always seeking in the 1st place. If you are new and this stuff seems confusing and baffling, it is actually, and it continues to be. But it does do something else that drugs and alcohol will never do. It will work. It will relieve that pain, the loneliness, the

IT can be lifted. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're all right. You're all right. So someone said to me, how many chances are you going to give drugs and alcohol? Give something else a chance. Give something else a chance. I'm very grateful to you, Sadiq. Thanks for letting me do this thing. You said 2 minutes. I'm guessing it was around 2 minutes ago. I feel like my obligation is complete.

It's not complete. There's an interrogative format now. Now we'll what do I say? I will now take questions.

It would be cursed and churlished to avoid Jonathan, given that he's in charge of the audio recording and could cut this together to make me seem like a right arsehole.

After living your lifestyle, being the person you are,

is it hard for you to stay sober alone? All the people that you see

my sponsor consistently reminds me I'm a garden variety. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Yeah. Like if we said like, if it's an interview, I get it. Jonathans asking how do I, with what he implied subtly over a number of words, was an incredibly glamorous and wonderful lifestyle. How do I stay clean and sober? It's difficult for me to repeat because I've not now got to sort of go. Russell, look at you up there, you hunk of a man. How do you do it?

He then sort of puck it up his lips and blew me a kiss, which was weird.

How do I stay clean? Because I like show business and all that stuff. My, my, well, it's no different from any other lifestyle. It really isn't like I just make a decision one day at a time to hand over my will to a higher power, stay in touch with my sponsor, talk to my sponsors. It ain't no different. It's like, you know, like I could tell myself a lie. Oh, there I go. I don't like those pies where people do cocaine, that fucking bullshit. It's boring. It really is. Like, I went out recently for a couple of people over the course of the evening, but I began the night with a couple of quite interesting people and then by the end they're just like morons, you know? Like

it deteriorates so rapidly. I've got no time for it. This is my life now. This is my life. I go to those things, I do those things, but I can get nothing from it. It's empty. Like once the veil has been lifted, one, I can't just jump back in that, oh, perhaps it's show business is going to be an incredible kick. It's just more glistening bullshit. So like this, for me, this is the real thing. It's no different from anything else.

The disease is no different from when I was poor and had nowhere to live. Yes mate, thank you. Can you talk about,

oh, you're right. Then this man has asked what about anonymity and being a public figure? Well, like, at first I didn't really understand the nature of the traditions that the anonymity is for the protection of the program. I thought, I'm not shown to be enough. Everyone I knew when I was drinking and when I was taking drugs, so why shouldn't they know? Now I'm not? And then I now know that the preservation and protection of this program is paramount. Nothing else is important. It's not a decision for us to make. My anonymity belongs to all of us collectively. So I will talk like, you know, I talk about addiction and alcoholism, but I never thought I talk about, you know,

about 12 step fellowships. But I never identify myself in the way that I would in these rooms because like, what if I fuck up? It's not beyond the realms of possibility that I might do something very, very stupid. It's happened in the past

that could reflect very negatively on our program. And this reminds me that we are all part of it. The whole is what's important. The individuals within that whole are irrelevant. We come, we go, we relax, we die, we drink, we don't drink. Who gives a fuck? The program goes on. The program goes on to our anonymity is integral. So as a public, you know my well, I've got enough arenas to show off in. I don't like, you know, I mean, for me, this is about my recovery. It's sacred to me. So

like it's a it's not a problem, but thank you. Yes, mate.

Which character defect is most challenging for me? I think they they come in such like hasty conglomerations. You know, they saw like I heard Sandy Beach saying like the pride is there sort of like the leader that hustles the rest of them together. And sometimes I like, I like, and I really sort of like my pride. I can't believe it because I think I'm so humble on that. But then I get kind of arrogant about my humility. My God, I'm humble.

What a humble thing to have said just then. That's the sort of thing Jesus probably would have said.

You're a bit like him. Yeah, I know.

So I guess pride, but like my sponsor always, can we watch that impatience because like he said, anything like in your life, just sit the fuck down, calm down, 'cause impatient. I think when you get a little bit of time, the impatience is what gets you 'cause anything will get better given a little bit of time, won't it? So pride and patience can really get me. Yes mate.

Oh, well done.

No.

Oh

yeah, I don't care. He's saying he's a newcomer. He's all miserable, bless him.

He don't think it's going to go, this pain, this misery, he wonders. He wants some sort of guarantee from us

that things are gonna get easy. Well, yeah, I like what it is, mate, is you're not doing what you're told. I know that already. That's what it is. Alright so like

if when you do what you're told you'll get I know it's hard because you don't trust no one. Why would you? Them arseholes they fuck you over your whole life why you going to start listening to them now? I get that but like this is different. They're only helping you for themselves

so you can trust us.

See, what you have to do is when you're unhappy,

just scrutinized the situation. Where am I? Not? Where is my life? If you would allow your disease in through any crack, the insidious little beast will devour you. So you have to close them cracks up. With this program. You have to look for where the application of the program is. Have you got sponsor? All right, little bastard. All right. She's been to a meeting today. What step are you on?

You're on the second step. Well, it seems like he's doing it right. I saw you smile just now. I don't mean anything wrong with you. I think you might have been attention seeker.

This lady then this man. You'll be alright, just do the program. It's the same for all of us. We all have our stories but the solution is identical for us all. If it works for me and look at these fucking lunatics, it will work for you.

Yeah, this lady is asking how I felt at 15 days. I'm presuming this is a selfishly motivated enquiry. 50 days, Oh my God, it's so horrible. It was so horrible. I couldn't sleep, had to leave the TV on at night or wake up so terrified. I was in that sort of treatment and having like arguments with everybody all the time for like all brittle and afraid. They took my life away. They took my identity away. These people are telling me I'll just talk to people, talk to someone, trust someone. And I did not trust nobody at 15 days. I felt like I was in a lot of pain

and a lot of sadness. And if that's what you're feeling, and I imagine that it is, then that's is how you should be feeling. And I assure you this, if I can assure you of nothing else, it's going to get better for you. It's going to be alright. Trust these beautiful people that are around you. Lean on them. Let it go. It's gonna get better. You're gonna be alright. You're gonna be alright. If you're feeling like all terrified, it gets easier.

Yes, Sir,

like all my ninth steps, this gentleman's asked what is my most difficult 9th step and how did I handle it? Well, that does that mean that's the last question? OK, so it's like it's retrospective. That was the last question. The last question was well served. Like my parents were really, really difficult. My responsibilities are like, you know, that I like they get 9th step is something that is somewhat ongoing for me. And I mean, I'm meeting people. I've fucked over a lot of people. So I could barely leave the house without like owing someone an apology.

I, I think parental amends are challenging because like, you know, because one somewhat feels justified and expecting that your parents will like look after you and stuff. But like my sponsor said, like you just completely own your part of it. Think of the things you did wrong. Like, you know, my dad, for example, he went around when I was growing up and when I did see him, it was kind of difficult. And you know, when I did my step nine with my dad, my dad drinks a lot and he was drinking while I was doing it and stuff. And

I was like, you know, that was very, it was very, very challenging

for me, but I did it because now when I look at my relationship with my father, God is in that relationship. You know, it's like, you know, we have to allow it to be everywhere 'cause we got no choice otherwise, Otherwise we, we're out of alignment. So that was difficult. I, I, I, it was a very, I did it with a lot of humility. I did exactly how I get humiliated. I do, I'm fucking told because I, oh me, I'm grandiose. I'll do flash stuff, but I'll say exactly what I was meant to say. I didn't say anything I weren't meant to say. And I didn't get anything I wanted, like, I didn't get

Russia because I've done Step 9 for sure. We all have some of us, you know, like, we're like, where people have said something. Oh, my God. Like people say, you know, it was me as well. And it's also so reconciliatory and wonderful. There were none of that in this one. It's almost like, yeah, you are a little bit of a prick,

but it was, you know, they're all good because there for me, it's not, I suppose it's not like a narrative thing like that was a fulfilling conclusion. You know, my, my, my narrative is now a consistent moment to moment relationship with a higher power. And these steps cultivate that. This program cultivates that. These means cultivate that.

Thank you very much for that question.