Steps 4 and 5 at the Fellowship of the Spirit in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Chris.

I'm an alcoholic.

I promise I won't bang the microphones together, really.

I did that last night, and it was not good.

Alice, thank you so much for the two and the three.

There were so many things that were said that are just powerful, and it took me so long to realize the enormity of...

alcoholism and my problem, I really just thought if I could quit drinking, all the pieces of the puzzle would fall into place.

And I could not have been more wrong about that.

Because, listen, I'm sober like six months, no step work, no nothing, just going to meetings.

And I got to tell you, I was a mess.

I was a scary mess.

there is a recovery program that we have available.

And for one reason or another, I'm looking back, I don't even know what was guiding me toward that program because I'm not a joiner.

I'm not somebody that's going to buy your line.

I know, I'm always convinced that I know

So I believe it was the spirit that pushed me toward whatever I needed to be pushed toward to start to come to the conclusion that there's a recovery process I really need to engage in.

Now I'm going to start with a couple of readings this morning.

And I'm going to start with the problem.

And then I'm going to talk a little bit about the solutions.

This is one of my favorite couple of sentences.

This is hidden away in Tradition 9 of the 12 and 12.

And it's on page 174.

It's about halfway down.

It says this.

Unless each AA member follows to the best of their ability our suggested 12 steps for recovery, they almost certainly sign their own death warrant.

Do you think they really mean death warrant?

Their drunkenness and disillusion are not penalties inflicted by people in authority.

They result from their personal disobedience to spiritual principles.

So what can trip me up in this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous?

What is the major roadblock for me to being successful and long-term recovered in this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous?

Disobedience to spiritual principles.

Don't you know inside that that's true?

You know, we get confronted with situations in our life, and there's this thing inside us called selfishness that pushes us in one direction, yet we know the spiritual path is a different one.

from that selfishness.

And I think the more we pay attention to that, the safer we're going to be in this place called Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now, that's the bad news.

Unless we practice to the best of our ability the 12 steps, we're walking dead people.

That's the bad news.

Good news is AA's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in their nature.

which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.

That's one of my favorite sentences.

It's from the foreword to the 12 steps and 12 traditions.

And I just want to unpack that a little bit.

What are the 12 steps?

They're a group of spiritual principles.

What happens if I practice them as a way of life?

They expel the obsession to drink.

I will be released from the obsession to drink.

I always tried to fight it.

I always tried to outsmart it.

And I always tried to manage around it.

How about we get released from it through the practice of these spiritual principles?

And the best part is I will become happily and usefully whole.

That's what whiskey used to make me feel like for five minutes before I became a vomiting pig.

I would feel happily and usefully whole.

You know, I felt good.

I feel good and I'm useful.

Let me give you some advice.

You know, I'd be sitting in a bar next to a surgeon and I'd be like, what kind of scalpel do you use, you know?

Why do you use that scabble?

You know, like I knew everything.

I was useful.

I'm actually useful today.

So that's really the problem.

And I thought the problem was my over-drinking.

My being over-served.

That's what I really thought my problem was.

That's why I came into Alcoholics Anonymous.

That's why I sought treatment.

Because one of the symptoms

of alcoholism got my attention.

And it was the over-drinking.

Now, we have to come to believe in a lot of stuff.

And we have to become willing in a lot of areas.

And there were so many things that were blocking me off from this.

Now,

I was under such delusion as a drinking alcoholic and, you know, stark raving sober those first few months.

I was under a lot of delusion.

And there were things that I believed that were wrong.

Now, did anybody ever come up to you and ask you this?

What is wrong with you?

I used to get that all the time, right?

And, you know, it would be a surprising question that, you know, I was a little confused about.

And I would usually just turn it around like I'd driven into your driveway and parked on your cat, you know, or something.

And you're overreacting, you know, or something.

Well, what is wrong with you?

I'd be like, what's wrong with you, you know?

There's cats everywhere.

I mean, I just couldn't see.

I couldn't see the depth of the damage that alcoholism had caused me.

Now, I believe this.

I believe you won't know what's wrong with you until you do a fourth step.

I don't think you'll really understand that.

until you do a four-step.

Now, I love this line.

I'm going to read this line, and then I'm going to move into the four-step.

It says, Being convinced that self manifested in various ways what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations."

Now, the 12-step program of recovery is amazing.

It's just amazing to me.

The more I work the steps, the longer I've been around, the more I pay attention to this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, the more I'm amazed that they got this right.

You know, a failed stockbroker who really wasn't even a stockbroker.

He was a guy that, hey, I got a hot tip on a stock.

You know, let me buy it for you and we'll share on the profits.

You know, that's not even really a stockbroker.

And then there was Dr. Bob, the failed proctologist.

He had a couple of problems.

One of them was he shook a lot, and the other he had really big hands.

So you'd be strapped down, and he'd be going after your proctor, and you'd be like, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, you know, second opinion.

So nobody's using him anymore.

He's about to lose his house.

These are the people who came up with this recovery process.

It's got to be God-given.

It's got to be God-given.

So I'm going to read this again.

Being convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us.

This is almost Zen-like, right?

Self, us, aren't we self and us?

I believe after going through this book like 300 times, I believe Bill saw self as a condition.

A condition.

Our alcoholism, right?

This self.

It's like our alcoholism.

So I was reading this book, and in this book it tells this really amazing story.

It's...

A bunch of scientists are doing a lot of study on rats and all this.

And they discovered this parasite.

And this parasite lives within a cat's stomach.

Happy as a clam in a cat's stomach.

That's where it lives.

Well, when the cat defecates, what happens is mice come along and eat that.

And then the eggs...

from that parasite hatch inside the mice.

Now the parasite doesn't want to be in the mouse.

It wants to be in the cat.

So what happens?

All of a sudden these mice start to become attracted to cats.

They start running out in front of cats and getting killed and eaten, and now the parasite is back in the cat's stomach where it belongs.

So this entity, this foreign entity, is causing something to do things against their own self-interest, like become attracted to cats, which is the exact opposite of what you would want to do if you're a mouse.

Think about alcohol.

Think about alcohol.

Alcohol caused us to do things...

that we're way against our own self-interest.

Think all the jackpots that you got in.

Think all the times you got in trouble.

Think all the people you let down.

And I kind of believe that Bill is talking about this self, the alcoholism that is in our thinking, as something that has to be overcome.

You can't entirely get rid of self

without God's help.

There's all this terminology in here.

And he's saying there's various manifestations of self that have defeated us.

Let's look at the most common.

And that's what the four-step inventory is.

And the fifth step is confessing or sharing self.

You know, those manifestations of self.

The sixth step is becoming willing to have God remove those manifestations of self.

The seventh step is humbly asking God to remove those manifestations of self.

The eighth step is putting a list of the people and the institutions that those manifestations of self have harmed.

And step nine is making direct amends to those people and those institutions where our manifestations of self have harmed them.

And step ten is to continually watch for manifestations of self and take certain exercises, you know, when they crop up.

And step eleven is to seek through prayer and meditation to get a deeper connection to this thing that isn't self, this power greater than ourselves.

And that's what this recovery program is about.

And let's look at the first common manifestation of self, which is resentment.

Anybody in here come into Alcoholics Anonymous a little bit pissed?

Anybody come in here a lot pissed?

I did.

I was mad at everybody.

Listen, my life had gone down into the toilet.

And I was upset at everybody and everything because I just can't.

I'm a smart guy.

Here I am.

I got nothing.

I got nothing going on.

And it couldn't be my fault.

It would be inconvenient to be all my fault.

So I didn't think it was.

I thought it was your fault.

I thought it was bad breaks.

I thought it was misunderstandings.

I thought it was crazy family.

I thought it was selfish bosses.

I thought it was vindictive police.

You could go on and on and on.

And I could point and tell you what my problems were.

Those are my problems, you know.

Fix all those and I'll be fine.

That was delusion.

You get through this fourth step and you do a fifth step the way this book says.

And something remarkable will happen.

You will go from believing your problems are coming at you to understanding that your problems are coming from you.

And that's a revelation.

That's an enormous revelation.

And you are on the path when that happens.

You know, you're firmly within the recovery realm when that happens.

So resentment.

Resentment.

It says it's the number one offender and it kills more alcoholics than anything else.

Do you want to know how it almost killed me?

I'll tell you.

I show up in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I absolutely have to be here.

And, man, you know, I am a page 24 alcoholic.

I am really in bad trouble.

And I show up in AA, and I join a home group because my sponsor told me to join this home group.

So I join this home group.

And I'm going for a while to this home group, and it was a weird home group.

There was like 100 people in it.

But there was a whole group of people that were old.

I mean, they must have been 60, you know?

And they're over by the coffee pot, right?

And they're talking about golf and stuff, right?

And then there's the young people who, there's like tons of halfway houses, right?

So there's a bunch of young people.

I'm in my mid-30s, and I just don't fit in.

And, you know, I'm not making friends.

Nobody's talking to me.

You know, I'm going to the meetings, but, you know, this group sucks.

This group sucks.

I'm out of here.

And I quit that group.

Because it wasn't meeting my expectations.

Well, I joined another group.

And this group is different.

This group, there's a lot of people in their 30s.

And, you know, I started to make friends and I started to hang out.

I started to date people in this group, you know.

And, you know, it's just completely insane.

But we're starting to have some fun and we're going to a bunch of meetings and we're really starting to make our life big time about AA.

And then the group conscience meeting started.

The slow, painful, root canal-esque group consciences.

So this is the situation.

There was a Tuesday step meeting and a Friday speaker meeting in this home group.

And all the reports were given on Tuesday.

They just wanted to get to the speaker on Friday, right?

So there was a guy who only went on Friday.

Okay.

And he had a real problem with no treasure report.

How come there's no treasure report?

So he started calling these group conscience meetings, and it turned contentious.

It turned ugly.

It split the room in half, and we went from 100 people, you know.

One meeting after another, we went from 100 people down to 80 people, down to 60 people, down to 20 people.

You know, finally, finally, you know, I've had it.

I'm out of here, right, because I'm resentful.

You know, this idiot is ruining this group because he wants to know what we're doing with his dollar, you know.

And so I'm out of here.

Now, the only smart thing I did was I joined another group.

And this was an even worse group.

This was a group where it was all professionals.

It was all people who, you know, all people who had six-figure, seven-figure incomes, and me, you know, with my car without a muffler.

And it was the only group left in the area, and I joined that.

Now, in the meantime, I want to explain to you that I learned how to do a four-step inventory, and I did the four-step, fifth step, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

Not imperfectly, but I got about the business of recovery.

And this group that wasn't even near as good as the other two that I resented myself out of, I stayed at that group for 20 years.

Because these deep resentments, they need to be mastered.

Mastered.

And the tools of this inventory process allows us to do that.

Let me look at this.

Let me look at the first example.

Bill gives a great example here.

He gives three columns, and then later on there's another column, and there's a couple other questions that need to be asked for a full-blown four-step.

But I'm just going to read the columns.

So he's got column number one is I'm resentful at.

Column number two is the cause, and column number three affects mine.

Let's just look at this one.

The first one is Mr. Brown, his attentions to my wife.

So Brown is hitting on this guy's wife.

Told my wife of my mistress.

Marty, isn't there a bro code against that?

I mean, that's just not something you do, right?

And Brown may get my job at the office.

So this Brown guy is hitting on his wife.

He blew up his side thing.

And he's going after the guy's job.

Okay, now you go all the way down to the bottom.

His wife, the guy's wife, likes Brown.

So the wife likes Brown and wants the house put in her name.

Brown's going to get the house.

Now let me ask you, let me ask you, has anybody ever come at you that hard?

Has anybody ever come at you that hard?

This is a great example because he's saying this resentment needs to be mastered.

Can you imagine?

You know, one of the greatest t-shirts, we've seen this t-shirt quite often at conventions and roundups like this, says, Mr. Brown needs his ass kicked.

Right?

Like, I get that.

You know, I'm with the guy with the shirt.

But these resentments kill us.

Right?

So even a resentment, even a resentment as bad as brown, has to be mastered.

So...

It's plain that life, which includes resentment and deep resentment, leads only to futility and unhappiness.

That's not what I want.

I don't want to have a futile life and an unhappy life.

So I was so inundated with resentments.

It was unbelievable.

These manifestations of self were killing me.

I would come to in the morning and pick my head up off the pillow if I was lucky enough to land in bed when I passed out the night before.

I'd pick my head up off the pillow, and the first thoughts that would go through my mind are, Those bastards!

I would immediately go to the people and the institutions that I was mad at.

And I would plot revenge.

You know, I'd have these elaborate revenge fantasies, like how I'm going to get these people, you know?

Now, that is a spiritual sickness.

That is a deep level of spiritual sickness.

That is a parasite.

You know what I mean?

Now, these resentments need to be mastered.

Now, there's a miracle in this process.

There's a...

There's a line of demarcation between the three columns.

So basically the three columns are I'm resentful at the cause and affects mine.

So we need to understand what Bill understood.

And he understood that these resentments come from a belief system within us,

that something we want is being harmed, threatened, or interfered with, or something we have is being harmed, threatened, or interfered with.

Without that being what we perceive, there's no wind for the sail of resentment.

There's nothing to be resentful about.

So we're perceiving that there's harm, threat, or interference,

to our ambitions, or the things that we hold as our own.

And he recognizes that.

So he asks us, what does it affect?

What does this resentment affect?

And there's basically seven areas itself.

Sex relations, self-esteem, personal relations, pride.

It goes on and on.

And those are belief systems that we have within us

that we want to protect and defend.

And forever, forever I was defending things that it was irrational for me to defend.

I spent my life defending positions and defending opinions and defending my way and what I think about this stuff.

And the conclusion I came to after going through this inventory was, it was like trying to defend a turd.

You know what I mean?

It's just, it stinks and everything, but it's mine.

You know?

What a waste of effort.

So...

So as you dig into this deep, deep personal reflection, you're really uncovering some truth about a manifestation of self that's defeating you.

And that's resentment.

So there's a line of demarcation.

Putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done, we resolutely look for our own mistakes, our own faults.

Where had we been in fault?

So

So I've never done that before.

You know, I understand how to be mad.

I don't understand how to do prayer work and then look for my mistakes and my faults.

That's an unusual exercise for me.

What do you mean?

What do you mean, what did I do?

But this book asks us to do this.

And if we've had a real strong first, second, and third step experience...

We're going to do this, whether we think it's going to work or not.

And it asks us, where have we been selfish?

Where have we been dishonest?

Where have we been self-seeking?

Where have we been frightened?

And I can find in every single resentment I've ever had, I can find

My mistakes and my faults.

And how I set the ball rolling.

How I participated in this thing that became a resentment.

I can always find it.

And there's freedom in that revelation.

I found that by the time I had finished that fourth column, half of my resentments were gone.

Because it says whether they were fancied or real.

Half of my resentments were fancied.

I would tell a story, and every time I retold the story, I would make it worse.

You know?

And so honestly looking at this stuff, honestly taking this inventory, it's about freedom, and it's about gaining access to the power.

And you just have to do this as an alcoholic.

You know, it's funny.

I've met a lot of alcoholics in my time, and I've met a lot of people that have been in therapy for decades.

You know, they're in therapy for decades.

They come into Alcoholics Anonymous and work with Harry the plumber on a four-step, and they're free.

You know what I mean?

It's just this stuff is designed for us because we are a special category of people.

I will tell you that.

All right, so remember fear is bracketed in the third column.

It's very difficult to have a resentment without fear being attached because we're afraid of the harm, the interference, harm threatened or interfered.

We're afraid that something we have is or something we want.

So that's a fear.

So it says...

Notice the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer, and the wife.

This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.

It's an evil and corroding thread.

The fabric of our existence is shot through with it.

It causes trains of circumstances that blow up our spot every time.

Now, if you would have come up to me when I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and said,

Chris, you're suffering from fear, the evil and corroding thread.

The fabric of your existence is shot through with it, and it's caused a whole lot of bad things in your life.

I would have said, get the hell out of my face.

Are you nuts?

I did not think I had fear, because I wasn't seeing fear the way they're talking about it in this book.

I saw it as cowardice.

You're telling me I'm a coward?

That's not what this is saying.

We're nuts.

We do incredibly dangerous, crazy things, if you're anything like me.

How we don't die of misadventure before we get here, it's just beyond me.

So fear.

So how I look at it today is I look at it as anxiety.

I look at what he's talking about as anxieties.

The things that I am uncomfortable with, the things that I want to avoid, the things that I just don't want to do.

So let me explain to you how fear almost killed me.

I'm sober a minute and a half, and the meetings I'm going to are in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

It's a little town in New Jersey.

And how you've got to go to the meetings is they're always in a church in New Jersey.

I think we have two clubhouses in the whole state.

So they're always in a church.

And they're always in the basement.

So here's me going to the AA meeting.

I know I have to go to the AA meeting, right?

I know I have to.

But I don't want to.

I'm uncomfortable with it.

So I'd drive around the block three or four times before I'd finally park.

And then I'd finally talk myself into getting out of the car and going up to the church.

And there'd be people outside smoking.

I'd be like, oh, my God, they're going to talk to me.

They might say a bunch of stuff.

I won't look.

And I'd go right past them.

And then you've got to go down these stairs.

You go down the stairs.

And then all of a sudden you walk into a room with bright fluorescent lights.

And everybody's having coffee and talking.

And I'm feeling, like, unbelievably uncomfortable.

And I'd go and I'd sit down, you know.

on and sit there and act like I'm not completely insane and this went on and on and on probably for my first six months that's how fear almost killed me because when I say I'm out of here that's like saying you know I went up to the pharmacist and he was snippy with me you know so I'm not getting my insulin anymore you know

Or, you know, the heck with that dialysis place.

You know, they made me wait.

You know, it's like insane.

So fear almost caused me to not be able to sit with you because of this level of anxiety.

It says fear must be overcome.

It must be.

So it asks us to do a fear inventory.

What is our fear?

Why do we have the fear?

We've got to look deep into this stuff.

You know, what are we afraid of?

Now, I had a revelatory experience with this fear part.

And it was a speaker.

I was listening to a woman give an 11-step talk.

and I'm going to paraphrase because I don't remember what she actually said, but this is what I heard.

If you ever sponsor people, you know that they hear different things than you say because they quote you in a meeting and you're like, what?

So I get that I probably didn't hear what she actually said, but what I heard was this.

All right, you know, I made a decision.

to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.

And then I went about a program of recovery to make that happen.

And then I get to the 11th step where I seek through prayer and meditation a more conscious contact with this God.

And then I go out and I start to help God's children and I start to be of service.

You know, I am firmly on God's team.

What is God going to let through to me that's not in my best interest in the long term?

And when I heard her say that, it was like an acid moment for me.

It's like, wow, that's true.

God has got this.

I'm now on God's team.

What do I have to be afraid of?

So fear, the type of fear that kills us is the type of fear that tells us we don't need to go tonight.

You know what I mean?

And that has to be overcome.

Now, it says now about sex.

Now, I want to put this into context, okay?

Bill Wilson and Hank and all the people that were really part of the architecture of the book Alcoholics Anonymous lived in New York City.

And they had just gone through the roaring 20s.

If you know anything about the roaring 20s, you think we are sexually promiscuous today?

We got nothing on the roaring 20s.

They were wild, especially like in New York City.

You understand?

So you have to take that in context.

This was a big challenge for all of them, especially because they're white middle-class men who could get away with murder.

But I like to look at this particular inventory as a relationship inventory.

Because this really isn't about sex when you start to dig into this inventory.

It's about how we treat people.

So it says we need an overhauling when we're looking at this inventory.

It doesn't say we need a tune-up.

It says we need an overhauling.

Okay?

Now...

Now, what an overhauling would be with personal relationships is all your old ideas, all your old belief systems need to be abandoned.

And you need to start over with this thing called relationships.

That's a heavy lift.

But I look back on my life and I've been unsuccessful with every single really deep relationship I had.

Every single one.

Listen, I had honest, honest love for a lot of women.

As I was going through my drinking career, I honestly loved you.

But if you got anywhere near me, listen, I wasn't restraining order guy, but I was pretty close.

You know what I mean?

What would happen is this selfishness and this self-centeredness would start to invade my belief system about this relationship.

And I'd be like, who were you on the phone with?

Where were you?

This is what you need to do or I won't be happy.

And all this stuff, and I got to tell you,

Any woman that had any level of sanity was like, I will be checking you later.

So I was unsuccessful with my innate desire to be coupled with another person.

It's a deep instinctual drive for me to be with someone.

But I wasn't capable of it.

So this inventory, here's what basically happened with me and this inventory.

I started to really pay attention to it.

I started to answer the questions.

We reviewed our relationships thoroughly.

Where had we justifiably aroused jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness?

Where were we selfish or dishonest?

What should we have done instead?

Who else did we hurt?

All these questions need to be answered today.

for each specific relationship in my life.

And I start to see, I start to see the pattern.

I start to see how my behavior is getting in the way of any type of decent relationship.

I have rendered myself permanently single with my selfishness.

All right?

It's not good news.

You know what I mean?

But it's true.

So I'll tell you how I handled this.

I went through this entire inventory.

I really started to pay attention to this stuff.

And I answered all the questions.

And at the end it says, with this information we shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life.

I would say for our future relationships.

So I've now identified the things that don't work.

I'm to ask God to remove these things as I move through the steps that don't work.

And slowly, you've got to understand, I am not a textbook example of somebody who worked a great program.

I just survived long enough to be able to work at all.

You know what I mean?

None of this was overnight.

But what happened...

What happened was I changed my behavior.

I started to do things like place the welfare of others ahead of my own.

I thought that was a typo when I first read it.

That made no sense at all.

You know?

But I started to do things like that.

I started to be considerate.

You know, and and I started to work on this particular skill set, you know, in whatever relationship I was in.

If I was in or out of a relationship, I really started to work on this stuff.

And what happened was I'm about I'm about I'm close to 20 years sober.

And there was a girl that I was really, really good friends with in high school, right?

Her name was Andrea.

We never really hooked up because she was 15 and I was 19.

And I was not a good person, but I couldn't go there, you know what I mean?

But we were really close.

She had a boyfriend and I had a girlfriend, but we really liked each other.

We hung out.

We did a ton of stuff together.

I took her to see Led Zeppelin and yes, and Pink Floyd.

You know, we would hang out.

We smoked bales of marijuana together.

You know what I mean?

And just just really enjoyed each other's company.

And then I went off to Florida.

Her parents divorced and she moved away and I lost track of her.

Honest to God, there were periods over time when I tried to find her.

But this is back before cell phones.

This is back before e-mail addresses.

You couldn't find somebody when they were gone.

You know, I even called up Trenton, you know, looking for every single phone book for every single area.

I just could never.

She had married and changed her last name.

I couldn't find her.

All of a sudden, Facebook pops up.

This is like 2008, right?

And I'm looking through friends of friends.

And I see her.

Oh, my God, Andrea.

So I send her a little message.

Hey, how are you doing?

I've looked for you for years.

I can't believe I found you.

She sent a message back.

Oh, my God, I thought you were dead.

No, I'm sober.

And we had a cup of coffee.

You know, within a month, you know, we were living together.

You know, she looked at me one day and she goes, do you live here now?

You know, because I'm an alcoholic.

You know what I mean?

I'd start bringing stuff over.

I'd start not leaving.

You know what I mean?

I guess I do.

I guess I do live.

So within a year, we were married.

And I got to tell you, we're having an absolute blast with this thing called marriage.

We truly are each other's best friend.

And the reason I'm sharing this is because I would not have had the skill set to pull that off.