Step 1 at the Fellowship of the Spirit in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Nice welcome.

Hey everybody, my name is Chris and I am an alcoholic

and I love Canada.

Yeah, You know, I, I'll tell you what I've noticed over the years is the Canadians, you're, you're a lot like Americans, but you're nice,

you know, and, and I really do, I really do love coming up here. I always, I always feel, I always feel so welcomed. So, so my job is to talk about the first step and, and that, that's kind of a, that's kind of a good task because I, I can, I can use a lot of my story

to highlight some of the things that I had to, I had to concede to my innermost self about the condition that I had called alcoholism. And it, it's funny, I caught alcoholism 6 months sober,

you know what I mean? Because, because what happened was I didn't really know what alcoholism was until I'd been in a, a, a while, you know, and, and people who had real thorough, thorough knowledge about, about the first step, you know, got with me and talked with me about it. If you were to ask me, you know, are you an alcoholic? Yeah, must be, you know, must be get a lot of DUI SI mean, you know,

I I just, I did. I didn't understand the scope

of alcoholism. Now now going back to going back to my my first drink prior to my first drink, you probably could have you probably could have diagnosed me with some type of an anxiety disorder. All right.

And the best way I can describe it was up until alcohol hit my lips for the first time, I was generally uncomfortable with myself and my environment. There was a lot of things I didn't want to do. There was a lot of situations I felt really weird in, you know, I, I was always really self-conscious in certain, you know, in certain situations.

And there was, there was like an angst that I had. And,

and because this is, you know, back in the 60s and 70s and you had to be cool. I, I wasn't going to let anybody know that I, that I was like really disturbed inside. You know, I just, I just acted as if everything, everything was, was okay. And I dodged and weaved every time I could, you know, if I could, if I could ever get out of something, I'd get out of it. If I could ever leave, I'd leave just because I was, I was always uncomfortable. Give you give an example. I,

I, I joined, I joined the wrestling team. I went to one practice. I joined the Boy Scouts. I went on one camp out. You know, I took guitar lessons. I took two lessons and stole the guitar. I, I mean, you know, these things were good ideas, but I would, but I'd become uncomfortable in the middle of them, you know, now, now here I am. I'm about, I'm about 13 years old and me and a couple of my buddies decide we're going to, we're going to cut school and we're going to get drunk.

And that's what we said about doing so. We, we, we cut school and we, we went back to my house and I took, I took down a bottle of

4 Roses whiskey and Canadian whiskey and poured 3 big water glasses. And me and my two buddies got to the business of getting drunk. And what happened with them was I, I would think it would be like a normal non alcoholic reaction to drinking alcohol. They had maybe half of their glass, maybe a little bit more, pushed it back and they've had enough.

Is anybody in here ever drink with people that have enough on you? You know, isn't that annoying?

Oh, no more for me. I've had two.

What are you crazy?

Two, let's finish the bottle and go to the city, you know, 'cause that's how I drank, you know. But they had, they had, you know, half their glass, they pushed it back and they'd had enough. And, and what happened with me was I finished my glass, I finished their glasses and I and I put a big hurting on the rest of that bottle and, and I went into my first blackout.

Any any blackout drinkers in here?

Lot of hands. Let it be known that there's a lot of hands.

That's disconcerting, isn't it? You know, you don't know anything about the night before and you wake up with like, with like broken bones or crashed cars and you don't know what happened. So, so I went into my first, my first blackout and I came to in a field about four or five hours later, staggered into the house and, and became incredibly sick.

You know, that first hard liquor sick where you know, for like 2 days all you do is like, you can't get off the horizontal plane except the vomit, you know, and I'm just ill and like you cannot believe. And the whole time I'm, I'm thinking I'm going to make this work,

you know, you know, this alcohol. And I meant it because, because here here's what here's what alcohol did for me. And this is the best way I can describe it. This is this is what happened to me about two drinks into that whiskey.

Ah, you know, all the anxiety, all the self-centered fear, you know, all the worrying about what you were thinking about me. All that stuff washed over me and I'm like, this is great, this is great. You two are my two new best friends. You know, there's so much. This is so cool, This is so cool. We're going to do this tomorrow. You know, I mean it. What it did is it shifted

completely my perception on the world and everything was fine. And I and, and here's the thing, I felt connected to you.

I felt connected to the universe. I felt like I was in unity with this thing called life. And if you give me, if you give me a substance that is going to do that for me, I'm going to pay attention. And I did. So from that moment forward, I became very, very preoccupied with alcohol. I'm thirteen years old and the drinking age was 21.

You know, so it was problematic. But you know, we, we are resourceful and, and, and, and I found, I found ways

and I also decided right then and there that I was never going to drink Canadian whiskey again because because, and I never did to my knowledge, being a blackout drinker, I can't really attest to that completely. But, but I started that, I started to ask around the kid. The third, the other 13 year old said it started to drink. And there was a, there was a number of items that they would use. There was,

there was a, a company that had a fine line of products called Boone's Farm.

And and I started to drink some, you know, some apple wine and strawberry Hill. And then I discovered Budweiser, you know, and then and then I discovered the schnapps and the BlackBerry Brandy and the Southern Comfort, you know, the, the hard liquors that you would you'd never go near once you become a, a true full blooded alcoholic. But but you know, I was experimenting with them now. Now right off the get go,

I had a lack of control

like I would I would become over served you,

you know what I mean and and I would miss the mark a lot of times.

I look back on it today and I know what was going on.

I know, I know what was going on with with, because I know about alcoholism now, but back then I didn't understand it because the people I was around seemed to be able to handle this alcohol. I, I need to try harder. I need to, I need to learn how to manage this better. So I tried to, you know, different alcohols. I tried, you know, smoking a lot of pot when I drank and that didn't work real well. You know, I, I tried all these different, all these different combinations and I'm trying to manage

my alcohol consumption. I'm like 15, you know what I mean? And, and it never, I never was able, I was never able to get a passing grade on on that. I would always overshoot the mark. You know, look, looking back, looking back, here's the thing about here's the thing about the first step.

We have an allergy. If you're an alcoholic,

Doctor Silkworth, in the doctor's opinion, identifies it as an allergy. An allergy is simply an abnormal reaction to a food or a beverage or a bee sting or whatever. It's an abnormal reaction. My abnormal reaction is I, I come to in Topeka with one shoe.

You know, that's my abnormal reaction when I, when I start to drink and what it looks like today, I understand it. Looking back, what it looks like is when I would take a drink

and more alcohol was available, the first drink would ask for the second drink, the second drink would insist on the third, the third would demand the 4th, and I would want the 27th drink more than I wanted the 26th. Now, this didn't occur to me in a logical way. In my mind, you know that's not how it works. It's just like you just grab another drink.

But but looking back at it, that part of alcoholism was active in me

right out of the gate at age 13, you know, when I started to drink, the phenomenon of craving would take over the allergy to the body. And if there was alcohol available, I would continue to drink it. There was exceptions, you know, like when you get arrested or, or, or, you know, you run out, you know, something would separate you from alcohol. But if alcohol was there, I would keep drinking until I was unconscious.

That's, that's one of the aspects of alcoholism

and it's, it's not good news, you know what I mean? Especially because of what alcohol did for me. Alcohol made me feel larger than life. Alcohol made me feel connected to all of you. Alcohol enabled me to dance. There was dancing lessons in those bottles. You know what I mean? I can, I can ask the girls to come out and dance. You know, if, if I'm not drinking, it's like I'm hiding in the corner somewhere.

She looked at me.

So, so alcohol, alcohol, you know, just just open my world up. So I've been, I've been trying to manage this, this magic stuff, but I've got an allergy

that, that, that that ensures I overindulge and pass the point of, of, of being, you know, of being sane and sound. And toward the end of my drinking, I was becoming violent and, and psychotic,

you know, the Doctor Jekyll, Mr. Hyde stuff, you know, I would come out of blackouts, you know, and find out what I did the night before. I was horrified. So I'm, I'm caught in this thing. I'm caught in this thing with alcohol. You know, I can't control it once I use it. And I'm, you know, I'm driven to use it

now. Now I'm, you know, I'm going, I'm going through my life. And if you had an Excel graph, right,

you could short, you could chart statistically my life going downhill over the years, because alcoholism is progressive, right? Over any considerable period of time, it gets worse, it doesn't get better. And, and you could just you could just plot that graph, you know, where my life is, is, is going, is going downhill and

I'm not able to see the truth for the faults about this.

I have a mind that allows me to remember very vividly what alcohol does for me and block out

the, the, the situations and the problems and, and how my life is going downhill. I can't, I can't see that, you know, part of part of alcoholism is, is delusion and, and delusion is just not knowing the truth, just not knowing it. You know, denial is denying the truth. You know it's the it's true, but you're going to deny it.

Delusion is really thinking

things are not the way they are. And I wasn't open to a lot of advice from anybody. You know, like like I wasn't, I wasn't. How do you, how do you, you know, what do you think I should be? You know, I'm not asking anybody. And, and if and if you're offering me your advice, I'm like, get off my back. I'm not, you know, I'm not interested in you, you know, you know, you're telling me not to. You don't party. Look, I party.

Are you lamely? Do you do you don't party? You must be lame. You know, I mean, I'm seeing things, you know, in the deluded, the deluded spectacles of alcoholism and, and, and over the course of time, more and more of my life, more and more pieces of the quality of my life are, are disappearing. You know, there's, there's sometimes in the early days where I had some fun, I think,

but but more often than not, more often than not, I, I was lying to myself about how much fun I had because it was, Oh, I had so many crazy situations. I'll tell you a couple of couple of crazy situations. All right. I lived about an hour outside in New York City

and we would go into New York City, we'd start drinking and we'd drive into New York City to go to concerts like every weekend. This is back in the 70s and I got to tell you every great bit, we had the greatest bands in the 70s and, and, and tickets for like Led Zeppelin Lord, were like $8, you know, I mean, we had, we had, and we would go into New York City every weekend. And I, I remember we were drinking on the way into New York City this one time and I think it was a Foghat Wishbone Ash concert. We all, we all drove in there, right?

And we're sitting there listening to some music and my buddy John comes back from the bathroom and he goes, Amen, Amen. They're selling LSD in the bathroom. You want to do some LSD? And there's really only one appropriate answer to that question.

Sure.

So so we go into the bathroom and remember, we're drunk. We we buy, we buy, we buy blotter acid. We take it, we let like one song go by, right? And we look at each other, we look at each other and we go, are you high? I'm not high. We must have got ripped off. We must have got ripped off. So we go back because there's tons of people in the bathroom selling stuff. We buy some some more and we go back and we sit down and and we wait maybe 5 minutes.

Are you high? No, I'm not high. No, we got ripped off together. Let's try one more time.

So we go back and we bite, we buy more of it. Now, if you know anything about this particular drug, sometimes it takes like half an hour for

all right. By the time the last song is playing, we're like this.

I mean, I mean, we're, you know, we're, we're like we're like just shot just freaked out, right. And I, I remember that, you know, the light, light lights are coming up.

Must leave, must leave auditorium, you know, must walk down the aisle. I mean, just freaked out, right? We get, we get out now. We had all come, we'd all come in a van and we all pile in the van. I remember curling up in a fetal position, just trying not to freak out, you know,

and, and if you're in New York City and you're going back to New Jersey,

there's, there's only a couple of ways and one of them is a tunnel, right? So,

so we're headed down to the Lincoln Tunnel and what it looks like is 8 lanes, 6 lanes, 4 lanes, two lanes, tunnel, right? And we're almost at the tunnel and somebody in the front of the van goes, hey, man, we'll never fit right.

So, so some of us get concerned and we start, we start moving toward the front of the van. And he's right. He's right. It's a mouse hole now.

I don't know if you've ever tried to back out of the Lincoln Tunnel,

you know, I don't know how Toronto drivers are, but I'll tell you, New York City drivers, you know, they're not afraid to use a horn, you know, and took us about 40 minutes to back out and,

and we took the bridge. It was just, it was safer

every weekend. It was every weekend. It was something, something like this, you know, I got in it. I got

in a ton of car accidents too. I remember, I remember, you know, allowing myself to become over served one more time at a bar

and and getting in the car, making it about making it about a mile down the road, the car slides around on ice,

hits a bridge going backwards and I get thrown out the the back window, right. So I remember like shaking myself too. And my legs are still like in the back seat and I'm laying on the trunk and, and I'm like, oh,

now it's a 1968 Toyota, Toyota Celica, right? So, so it's still running. So what do you, what do you do in a, in a situation like this? Now listen, the, the car, there's not a window left in the car. It's bent like a boomerang. It's got 3 flat tires. That drive shaft is slap in the frame. You know, I start to drive home,

it's going whack in a book of the band whacking a book of the band. And I drive by a cop taking radar.

Hey, I'm going about a mile an hour. He he doesn't even pull me over. He walks me over,

so he he reaches through the broken window and he starts shaking me. Where did you have that accident? You know, glasses flying out of my hair. I'm like, what accident?

What are you hassling me for? You know,

it's like, where are you going? I go, I'm going home, he goes. Where's home? I go. Past your Ridge, he goes. That's 40 miles, you know, I mean tires.

I had a car, you know? You know how they are,

Anna,

always hassling you.

Oh, God, you know, I had situations situation, you know, situations like this, all the, all the time, crazy stuff. Now it got to the point where I couldn't really leave the house and drink anymore. My my alcoholism, the progression of my alcoholism had gotten so great that I just, I get in trouble, you know, I go to a bar and I'd either pass out on the bar and bartenders hate that

or, or I'd get cut off and and I hated that,

you know, so there'd always be some kind, there'd be some kind of problem. So, so I ended up like the last eight years of my drink and I was just drinking at home. I'd buy a bottle and, you know, go home and even even in my own house, I would, I would get into trouble. You know, I was a drunk and dialer. Anybody in here, anybody in here drunken dialers. Oh, isn't, Oh, that's,

oh. What would happen is I'd go downstairs where the the telephone was, you know,

like the next morning and I'd see, I'd see the names of the phone numbers. I'd be like, Oh no, Oh no. I called Mary Lou Mcgillicuddy from 5th grade. No, I could just imagine

10 years. I love you.

I'm gonna get to kill myself, you know.

So, So what? So what would happen is is I started to cut the phone lines when I started to drink. I did. I'd go downstairs and I cut the phone line.

There's only one problem. I'm an electrician. So, so, so I'd get drunk and I'd splice the wires back together.

And so I started to get creative, right? I cut it by a knothole, you know where it would be really hard to splice back here. One time I put an extension ladder up on the side of the house and cut the phone line way up at the peak of the house, figuring I'll never be able to get up there, you know, next day I found like a milk crate and the, and the extension ladder up and a bunch of a bunch of electrical tape. I taped it back. Finally, you couldn't even hear anything on the telephone. It was like

like this, right?

Got to call the phone company up, you know, and, and the phone guy comes out and he's got his flashlight, he's walking, he's going, what the hell?

Because it looks like somebody cut this phone line 25 places and and Scotch tape them back together.

I'm like, yeah, sure. I thought it was too.

You don't want to look stupid

and so probably have to run a new line, you know, Oh my God, now that's the funny stuff. You know, there's tragic stuff, there's pathetic stuff that went on. There's shameful things that I was, I was involved with and all of it, all of it. You know what it did? It took a piece out of my spirit every single time it took a piece out of my spirit. When I showed up to you, I had a broken spirit.

You can't let the amount of people I let down

and have a good, you can't make and break the commitments that I made. And you, you can't treat the people that you are supposed to actually care about the way I treated them and, and have a, have a good spirit, unless you're like a, a psychopath, you know. And so, so I came in and I came in with a absolute crushed spirit. I showed up, I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous 1989 and, and I was, I was beaten and, and I really, really believed

the, the, the velocity of my drinking at this point in time was like this, this would be a work, a work day, right? I, I would, I would, I would come to in the morning, you know, wearing the clothes I'd passed out in the night before. And I, I go to the bathroom, I throw some water in my face. I do some vomiting, you know, and you know, go, go out, you know, have a cigarette, go out to my car, go off to my terrible job. Just swear to God, I swear to God, I'm never going to do this again. I swear to God, today's the day. I know I have

said this 400 times before, but there's something about today that's different. I really mean it today. I am never going to, I'm never going to drink this crap again. And I go off to work, you know, with this, with this commitment to never drink alcohol again. And, and Quentin times about 4:30, I get, I get half a sandwich down, I get rehydrated. I'm starting to feel somewhat human by about 3330, and I start to consider this

this this decision I had made.

I start to see it as quite possibly an overreaction.

We might, we might have to modify this never, never, ever, ever, ever drinking again. You know, that's, that's a, that's a pretty strong as a matter of fact, we're going to modify it today. And, and I'm going to stop at the and I stop at the liquor store and I buy another quart of vodka, another quart of bourbon and go home and start, start drinking it. And, and here's the thing. Here's the thing, my the velocity of my consumption was this.

I would start drinking and in an hour I would be drunk.

In two hours I would be in a blackout and in three hours I would be unconscious. That was the velocity of my drinking toward the end.

You know, like there's no party left when, when you're drinking like that, there's no like going on a date, you know what I mean? There's no, there's no volunteering at the, at the PTA or something. You know, none of that is available. You, you are, you are now committed to this thing

called called blackout drinking. And there's no room for anything else. And and that's, that's where, that's where my alcoholism had gotten to. Because here's a second piece of step one. The first piece of step one is I can't, I can't control it when I put it in my body.

OK, that's kind of an easy 1:00. We, we kind of all understand that to a degree, right? If we're an alcoholic, The one that was the heavy lift for me was I was without defense against the first drink. That one was tough for me because what you're telling me is you're telling me I'm insane. But, but look at my experience. I swore off alcohol in the morning

and I changed my mind by the end of the day.

That's insane.

That's insane. I didn't see it as insanity. I saw it as changing my mind because I party.

But think about it.

My alcoholism is to the point now where I am, I'm, I'm experiencing alcohol poisoning the way I'm drinking and I come to in the morning with, you know, my eyes are yellow, my hair's sticking straight up. You know, I'm shattered. I'm so I'll, I'm shattered to do that day after day after day to change your mind. It's a sane and sound decision to say today is the day I'm going to quit

sane and sound.

I'm going to modify that decision and go to the liquor store. Absolutely insane. All right. But I, I didn't, I didn't give the devil his due. I really thought that I was playing a part in that decision. And the book Alcoholics Anonymous is very, very clear. We've lost choice and drank. We are without defense

and drink and folks, that's a hard, that's a heavy lift. It took me a while,

Alcoholics Anonymous, to come to that conclusion that that really is my problem, that I'm powerless over alcohol. How much power is powerless?

It's right up there with not a hell of a lot,

you know what I mean? So if I'm admitting to powerlessness, I'm admitting I play no role in when alcohol goes back in my body. I'm not there. I'm not there. I'm suffering from a strange mental black blank spot, a subtle form of insanity

that precedes the first string. And that's, that's what Alcoholics Anonymous, the book Alcoholics Anonymous is telling me I suffer from.

And without, without experiencing a power greater than myself, I'm doomed, doomed to drink over and over and over again. So it's April 1989 and, and alcohol has really got my attention. I'm starting. I'm starting to do things that just.

Yeah, I, you know, I I called up my boss in a blackout and threatened his life. I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill your family. I'm gonna kill all of you. And because I was in a blackout, I didn't remember.

And I went into work the next day.

He's like, what the hell you doing here? You know, I'm like what?

He's like looking to be like crazy. What do you mean? What's wrong?

Don't you remember what you did last night? What you threatened my life? I did.

What'd you do? You know, why did I have to do that?

I mean,

so like, like stuff like this is going on and it, it, it gets your to, I do not want to be the guy that comes to in the jail cell and, and the jailer comes up. Hey, kid, you really did it last night, You know, and not knowing why I'm in jail and having, having them tell me that I've just killed my family or something. I, I couldn't be that guy. So I signed myself. I signed myself into a treatment center. I, I finally got it that these decisions every day that didn't work,

you know, maybe I need some help to, to quit drinking,

sign myself into a 28 day treatment center. Did the whole 28 days, did my job in there, got out of there. They recommended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings if you feel like it. And you definitely should come back to outpatient. So I'm going back to outpatient. I'm doing some, I'm doing some AA meetings

and I've been treated for alcoholism. Anybody in here get treated for alcoholism? You've had you've had the treatment, everything should be good, right? So one day I'm on my way to an A, a meeting and the thought crosses my mind

and I don't know that I really been doing this whole a, a thing with like 100% and it's, it's hard for me even to remember what it's like being drunk. You know, it's got to be almost three months now.

I'll bet if I bought a gallon of vodka and drank it, it would remind me what it's like to be drunk. And I would, I would go back to Alcoholics Anonymous with a, with a whole new enthusiasm, man, I will be the, I will be the, a, a kid. And so that's what I did. I bought a gallon of vodka and started to drink it to improve my sobriety

and it was working The first drink I'm drinking the first drink. This is really this is a good idea. You know, I,

I'm pretty, I'm pretty sharp to think of something like this. I'm drinking the second drink. Wow, this, this really, this really makes a lot. You know, I'm going to go back to the AA meeting and recommend everybody try this. And, and then the third drink hit me and an intoxication washed over me and I, and I could not. All of a sudden I was restored to sanity. All of a sudden I said Oh my God,

Oh my God, I've opened up the cage door to the beast and the beast is going to move me around like a puppet till he's done.

You know, I can't believe I've been so stupid that, you know, where's the rest of the ice?

You know, like, because once you're in, you're in, right?

The next seven months were a pathetic, terrible, awful experience for me. And it all all culminated, you know, in Christmas 1989. You know, that's I'm living at moms because that's what happens when you you know, you're, you're sharp and happening. I

and, and really and really got it all together. I'm living at mom says so everybody comes home for Christmas. So it's Christmas, you know, my brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cats and, and they'll show up. They'll show up for Christmas and, and I go, I go into, I go into a blackout and my brother's playing Christmas carols. You know, there's people are putting presents under the tree. The stockings are hung by the chimney with care

and I go into a violent blackout. I threaten all their lives

how to kill you because they said something. You know how they are, right? You know what you say and and I came out of that. I came out of that and and that was that was it. That was it. I wished for the end. It was my jumping off point. I either wished for the end. God either has got to get me sober or kill me. I can't go on like this anymore. I don't have it anymore, you know,

you know, Alcoholics or something like like 50 times more likely to kill themselves than non Alcoholics to take their own life.

Because, because we understand what pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization is. We've been there, you know, we set up camp there, you know, and watch the hideous 4 horsemen, you know, terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair circle the camp. And it's sometimes it's just too much. It's just too much for us. So, so I end up back in alcohol extonomous.

So I'm in a A and I don't know what is going on. I am going to these meetings and people are sharing.

You ever go to meetings where people share

and I'm like, what the hell are they talking about? You know, it was like these discussion meetings, I'm talking, I'm talking like early 1990 discussion meetings. It was a free for all. It was a while less back then. Nobody had topics. They didn't have to talk about alcoholism. And you talk about anything. You know, somebody raise their hand. You know, today, you know, I went out to mow the lawn and I noticed that it wasn't, it wasn't being cut the way I would like. So I lifted up the lawn mower

enough. The lawnmower blade was dull. So I took the lawnmower blade off and I took it downstairs shop to be sharpened and wouldn't you know it, I forgot to bring my wallet.

Thank you for letting me share

and I'm, I'm sitting in this meeting, said. What the hell is going?

And, you know, finally this guy, this guy, my name's Danny. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. He starts to share. He starts to, to share about living in a box in the park, you know, selling blood, you know, and, and I could, I could start to relate a little bit, you know, you know what I mean. Like, wait a minute, wait a minute. This might be the right place for me if Danny's here,

you know, and, and I, I, I realized, I realized I was going to, I was going to meetings

where it, it was, it was the type of area that I was going to was really a wealthy town, right? So you'd be sitting in an, a meeting and there'd be a brain surgeon, there'd be a trust fund CEO or a hedge fund CEO, you know, there'd be a Washington, DC lawyer, you know, like these are, these are the people in the meeting. So there, there there'd be like Cadillacs and Jaguars and all this stuff and, and me with, you know, with, with

1956 Ford Granada, you know, wearing clothes that didn't fit. And, you know, it was, it was the, it was, it was how I survived, I have no clue. But here's what happened. This guy, RadioShack Mike, he's my, my first friend in Alcoholics Anonymous, right? RadioShack Mike makes friends with me. I have no idea why. You know, I was like the type of person that you, you really, you really kind of kind of,

you know, stay away from. I was, I was, I was like

high strung, you know, it's really is the way it was. What

what'd you say? You know, I was like that guy. So, but he made friends with me and and he was this real pious guy, right? Very pious. He would go to new age bookstores. He's really into this, to this whole recovery thing. He's really into this whole sobriety thing. He's happy. He's like, he's like six months over. He's happy as can be. And he's going to all these new, new age bookstores. And you know, one day he'd come there and go. Chris, Chris, do you have a pyramid over your bed?

I put a pyramid over my bed. My life's never been the same.

The next week it would be. Could you use crystals? Oh, man, crystals. They've changed my life. I'm going to get you some crystals. I'll have to get you the strong ones,

Chris. You'll do affirmations. I've got to spook on affirmations. It's changed my life. Now, now here, now here's the thing. He got happy and he started to feel really good. You want to know why? Because he was in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because he got busted with an 8 ball. He got busted with an 8 ball and his lawyer said you should probably go to a A and get all the lawyers from everybody and go to treatment. You know, did not go to jail.

So he drank three times in his life. So,

so he's happy like in 10 seconds. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering why I'm still psychotic hanging out with this guy. I tried doing those affirmations. I'm like, Chris, you're wonderful guy. No, I'm not. You know,

listen, if you have a, if you have a case of alcoholism, treating alcoholism with affirmations, it's like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb, you know what I mean?

But here's what here's what RadioShack Mike did for me. Somebody handed him a big book workshop by the lake from the late great Joe and Charlie back, back in, back in the 80s, right? And he listened to it. He didn't care, care much for it. It didn't speak to him. You know, just like, just like there's a lot of people who who the book Alcoholics Anonymous don't speak to. You know, I wonder why.

I'll tell you what, when Bill Wilson is talking in the big book, he's always talking

to the real alcoholic, the person who's lost all hope, the hopeless alcoholic, the person who's gone down the scale. That's who he's talking about in here. So a lot of us, a lot of us read this and it's like, wow, this, you know, this is the most amazing book in the world. There are people that read this and think it's the biggest piece of crap out there. It's 'cause it's not their experience, right? So he's listening, he's listening to these, to these, to these Joe and Charlie Workshop tapes, and he's seeing it as a.

Over reaction, you know, he's in the middle of the Course in Miracles, you know? So he hands it to me and he said, he says, says Chris, I didn't care much for these, but something tells me you should probably listen to them.

And I started to listen to him and that's really when I started to learn about about alcoholism. Now I've covered the the first two alcoholic pieces of step 1:00. I've got an allergy of the body that manifests in a craving. And once alcohol is put in my body, my whole existence craves more alcohol. That's one part

I have an inability to stay separated from alcohol.

It doesn't matter how much I need to. It doesn't matter that I'm going to jail. It doesn't matter that she's leaving. It doesn't matter that I'm going to lose my job. It doesn't matter that that I really, really, really want to stop drinking. None of that stuff matters because I'm without defense against the first trade.

The subtle forms of insanity and the strange mental blank spots are going to manifest in my life and and I'm going to come out of it with a drink in my hand. That's what that's what the book is telling me. I am without power. Without power

to stay away from alcohol,

that's bad enough, right? 2 problems, one of them when you're drinking, one of them when you're not drinking. No big deal.

But there's a dash. It's even worse than that. There's a dash that our lives have become unmanageable. That our lives have become unmanageable. I believe. I believe, like the book says, we are spiritually sick. Remember I said that I came to you with a broken spirit? My spirit was just destroyed.

I I had levels of anxiety that were unbelievable. I had levels of resentment that were unbelievable. I had guilt and shame and remorse that was crippling me.

I would think of these horrible things I did. I go, oh, you know, I mean, I'd have a palatable reaction to these memories.

There's language in the book Alcoholics Anonymous

that I believe

it is informative on. What are they talking about? About unmanageability. When I first showed up. Yeah. My life is unmanageable. I I I lost my driver's license, you know, for six times. You know, she left me. You know, I got a terrible job. My friends are disloyal. You know, I hate everybody. I get terrible neighbors. Yeah. My life is unmanageable. I'm looking out here

because that's what we want to do. We want to lookout here. This is what the problem is out here, but that's not what the problem is. The book Alcoholic Synonymous tells us that we're restless, we're irritable, and we're discontented. On a good day,

we're praying to misery, depression, anxiety, self-centered fear, guilt, shame, remorse.

On a normal day, the bondage of self. And on a really bad day, the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, the hideous 4 horsemen, terror, frustration and despair. That's what we that's where we get to. That's what happens to our spirit. So we come into Alcoholics Anonymous and the brass ring at the end of the steps is having had a spiritual awakening. I believe that's what we do, folks. I believe we wake up.

I believe we wake up and it doesn't mean we become perfect. You know, we're not rendered perfect, but we're rendered useful. Is what we're rendered. We're rendered useful. We're not rendered perfect.

So bit by bit, my spirit started to heal and I started, I started to wake up. And today some of the things that I that I'm working on, there's a, there's a body of work that proceeds the third step prayer in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. It's it's, it's the dilemma of self right,

selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles. We're we're we're, we're self will run riot, even though we usually don't think so. This is a manifestations of self have defeated us.

There's all this terminology in there about this condition of self.

And because Alcoholics Anonymous is 1000 miles deep, there's always going to be stuff for us to work on. And I'm, I'm working, I'm working today on this, on this unmanageability. I, I believe, I believe the root of my unmanageability comes from the selfishness and self centeredness that has been has been burned into me through a, a default mechanism. Right?