#106 Language of the Heart

In 12 step recovery we talk about what I was like, what happened and what I am like now. Its not about abstinence (although that's the critical starting point) Its about a lifestyle that does not include resentment, fear and shame. Acquiring tools to deal with life on life's terms. This is a lifetime practice, but when adhered to can produce experiences beyond our comprehension or imagination. Similar to religious conversion experiences this process is about change, transformation and aligning with a Power greater than ourselves the evolution of an incredible living experience. The Power in our stories is what we call the language of the heart. If you find yourself nodding in agreement, or laughing , or both you have made a connection through the heart. You are not alone...hope is born!

Transcript

Setting The Stage: “It Works”

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I'm setting my watch to give you false hope. I got a story. I'm Roger, I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober since October 11th, 1978. Because it works. It works, but it only works if you work it. And I know that's a little cute little cliche we have in the fellowships, but it's true. And you work it until it works you. And then it becomes your life. Okay. I am very similar in uh context to Bart. Um, I wasn't quite as extreme, but I had the belligerent attitude. I had the closed mind. I had the argumentation. I had the atheism. I had the package. I am the poster child of the failure in Alcoholics Anonymous. Okay? So I'm not going to talk a lot about drinking because I think we all know how to drink. And I think we all know my old man used to say if you put a quart of liquor in anyone, they'll do stupid things. But we do it sober too. Right? It's just a gift. I'll tell you about the gift. Um I grew up in a situation that was fine on paper. I had an alcoholic dad. And I had uh three siblings. All of us were drunks. My dad was a drunk. My mom was the Al-Anon, and that's how recovery got into our home. My dad was drinking, and he was a uh a higher executive. And when you're a higher earner executive, you don't have drinking problems. You have nerve problems. And uh dad would end up in the hospital about twice a year for his nerves. And uh one of his drinking buddies, Esther, was in there with him consistently. And the last time he was in, he got booted out early, and someone brought an AA meeting into the psych ward. And Esther, who was as bad a drunk as my dad, got the pamphlets. 20 questions. Are you an alcoholic? Is AA for you? She read it and she ran to my mother, Marion, and said, I know what's wrong with Dom. Took her two more years, but she came. Anyway, my mom read this stuff and went, damn, this is it. We got alcoholism here. She started going to Al Anon. You'll never hear me tell the bad Al Anon joke. I have reverence for Alan because Al Anon saved our whole family. Because my mom started going. My mom started going to these meetings twice a week, and my dad thought she was having an affair because she wouldn't tell him where she was going. And I'll tell you, it was uh interesting because we always perceived our mother as the weak one because everyone was always running all over her, and dad was running all over everyone, and she was lying to cover up the drinking and all the behaviors. And uh I was in the living room, my dad was drunk in the corner, and he started crying, and he said, Mom, will you call Hazleton? And she said, Call yourself. And my jaw dropped. I went, Who is this woman? And that's how it started. That's how it started. And uh a couple years ago I helped my mom die. I helped both my parents die. And my mother was uh in assisted living for about 11 years, had a stroke, and I was in charge of taking care of her uh well-being and her care. And I'll just shorten this up. We uh she was dying, and she had stopped eating and drinking, and it was about day three, and I'd helped several people die previous to my parents, and I knew what was going on, and and uh my brother was in from out of town, and he was doing his amends and talking to her. She hadn't opened her eyes for three days, hadn't spoken, and at the end he said, Mom, I love you. Pause. Do you love me? And my mother did not open her eyes and she said, I love everybody. Two breaths and she was gone. 96 years of living, 40 plus years of Al Anon. Could you say that today? Could could I say that today? Would my last being dying breath be I love you all? I don't think so. I'm not that well, but I'm working on it. So that's how recovery got into our house. So let me give you the reader's digest version of this. Um I started drinking when I was about 14, and it was great because my dad was a drunk. We had a liquor cabinet under the stairs in the basement, and my dad was an engineer, civil engineer, dams, bridges, power plants, right? So he's got this padlock, a combination lock on the liquor cabinet. But he knew he'd probably forget the combo, so he left the nuts on the outside. So I could just go in and take it apart, get my bottle from the back row and move on. I didn't have the words restless, irritable, discontented. I did not have the words for the way I felt as a boy growing up. But it's somehow it's summarized in this thing we often hear ourselves say from different vantage points. I never ever felt comfortable in my own skin. So I found a thing, uh, music, and I started playing when I was about 13. I started playing professionally when I was 15, and I got some things that I've always wanted. I got attention, and I got some applause, and I got some money, and I got some girls, because they were just girls, they weren't women yet, and uh, and so I'm going rock star, that's my goal. The hell with all of you, I'm gonna be a rock star. So um, this is the deal. You say we're having a party over the house, come on over after the gig. Oh, okay. Because I had this little piece of my personality, I could grow up real big when I was on stage. But when I got off stage, I became me again. And so I'm over there. It takes about an hour, hour and a half to get all the gear packed and go over to your house. And I come in the house, and there's maybe 15, 20 people. And I come in the house, I can't even make eye contact. My eyes are just staring at the floor. And I have a couple of drinks. This isn't a drink. Okay, this is a glass. I had a couple of drinks, no ice plates, it takes up too much space. I had a couple of drinks, and my hair could come on. I have a couple more drinks, and I could start talking to a couple of the guys there. Have a couple more drinks, and I could start talking to Georgie. Oh, maybe. Right? And then I had an out-of-body experience. I found out I could look right in her eyes and I could speak on any topic for any length of time, no information required. Drag coefficient of a Spanish sparrow at 10,000 feet with a six-ounce twig in his claws and a three-knot headwind, and I'm giving you the thermodynamics. And I'm literally standing next to myself going, go, Rod, go!

SPEAKER_00 8:46

That's just so cool.

Powerlessness In Action: The Hump Day Spiral

Consequences Mount: Warrants, Debt, And Danger

Doctor’s Verdict: Dying And A Strange Relief

Final Run, Detox, And The First Honest Surrender

Neutrality Without Steps: Grace Before Belief

Hiding In Meetings, Sponsoring A Friend, Hard Lessons

Steps Over Abstinence: Real Change Or Else

Suicidal Night And A Second Step At Gunpoint

Redefining God: Decision And Action In Steps

Service, Sponsorship, And Loving The Unlikely

SPEAKER_01 8:48

And she's looking at me with this really weird look on her face. I think she's impressed. And she's thinking, psycho. But I don't know that because it's magic, isn't it? Everything that vexed me for my whole life disappeared completely or was so minimal it didn't have an effect. The nut the uh short version of this is I was six foot four, bulletproof and irresistible. I don't see a problem with here. My IQ went up 80 points, too. So, what does that look like when you do that for about 15 years? You know? All right, uh any bar room drinkers here? Yeah, okay. Any barroom philosophers here? Thank you. So I'm on my stool. And we're talking, and I got it figured out. You gotta figure it out too, and I hear this thump, and I'm going, what the hell? And I go back and I'm finished my thought, and another thumb, what is going on? And the guy's looking at me, he said, Are you okay? And I said, What do you mean am I okay? He said, Well, you keep passing out and bouncing your head off the bar. And I go, that little trickle of blood coming down my forehead. Damn right I'm okay. I'm killing it. Did you ever have those conversations? By the end of the night, you know, we figured the whole damn thing out. But I can't remember it the next day. So the next time we do this, I'm bringing a legal pad. And I wrote it all down this time. And I'm thinking, this is gonna be so good. And I sobered up two days later, and I looked at it, and I thought, I can't read any of this. It's just scribble. But it made so much sense at the time. This is the package. You know, as a boy, I copped two ideas. One is fear, I'm not safe, and the other one is shame. There's something wrong with me. There's something about me that's unlovable, dirty, broken, incomplete. And I had that long before I had words to describe it. So when I had this experience with the music and the alcohol, I thought I found a solution. So they say you have an abnormal reaction to alcohol. No, we don't. It's the only one we ever had. It was normal for us, yeah? It was normal for us. So getting to that idea, abnormal reaction, what does that look like? Powerlessness, what does that look like? Because it was empowering, wasn't it? It made me feel good, it made me feel bulletproof. What do you mean powerless? I didn't get powerless until I got sober and went to AA. Then everything went downhill. So here's a little powerless story. So, and I'll tell you, I'll backtrack in a minute and tell you how I got sober, but I was uh looking for examples of this powerlessness and the obsession. And I recalled, it was somewhere in the last two years I was drinking. I recalled a time I came off a run. So if I had three days off, I was drunk for three days. If I had five days off, I was drunk for five days. If I had one day off, I was drunk for two days. And I came off this run, I was really sick. By this time I had banged up some organs in internally, and uh, and I was alone in the world, and I came home, I could hardly walk, and I laid down on the bathroom floor. Do you remember the cool tile? Oh baby, I'm home. And I'm laying there and I said to me, no witnesses, I'm taking the week off. My mother was a normal drinker, and she never thought, I need to take a break. You know, we talk about our drinking careers. I'm taking a break. I'm taking the week off. I said it to me, no witnesses. Why? Because I was so beat up and so sick, I couldn't take another step. But I was young, too. I was still in my late 20s, so my body was pretty resilient, even considering what I'd done to it for 15 years. And so this this is the alcoholism. It's Wednesday. And the voice says, It's hump day. We're not drinking self-reliance, Bill, high resolve, willpower. We're not drinking, but it's hump day. Well, no, we're not drinking, but it's two for one. That's good economic policy. We're not drinking, we're not drinking. It's taco night, free food. Free food, two for one. I'm sure the boys have missed you. You haven't seen it for 72 hours, you know. And this thing is trying to make a deal with me, and I'm going, I ain't having it. Because I said I'm taking the week off. It's one thing. I lie to all of you with regularity. I don't knowingly lie to me. When I give me my word, I expect me to keep it. I've taught you not to expect that, but I expect it. So it's on. It's two for one. It's hump day. Taco night, free food. I need a plan. What's the plan? I'll just have two, three beers, no more than four. Beers not even drinking. And I'll shoot some pool, get some tacos, and get the hell out of there. Plan. But no permission. Right? You gotta have permission. I got a plan. Two, three beers, no more than four. Shoot a little pool with the boys, free food. What could go wrong? But I don't have permission. And now my alcoholism bailed me out and it said, you know what your problem is? You overreacted. You're fine. It's Wednesday, and you're doing fine. You can walk, you can talk, you're keeping some food down. What's the problem? We got a plan, and now we got permission. I think I overreacted. So I go to execute my plan. That was Wednesday. I woke up Sunday in Milwaukee with a strange person who also woke up with a strange person. Okay? If you're a black outdrug, you know what I'm talking about. We're bright, we're intelligent. You can't say, where the hell am I? I did say, Did we get married? So you look for stationary, you turn on the TV, find the local news, whatever, and you figure out where you are. Because you don't want to out yourself. I have no idea where I am. I have no idea how I got here. Do I have a car? Do I have my bill fold? You know what? So this is this is my life. So what's the end game? Here's the end game. I had warrants in six states. I hadn't filed taxes federal or estate for five years. I had restraining orders going both ways, my first divorce. We numbered them. I had a band and a family, a wife and three kids under the age of eight. I had uh about twelve, fourteen thousand dollars worth of bad checks. I knew they were my checks because they were all over the walls at the bar. And speaking of fiscal policy, in those days, in the 70s, they didn't have the computer system yet. So you could have multiple accounts in multiple banks. It's called kiting, it's called fraud. And so you just keep paying yourself with money that doesn't exist and then they catch up. And then I had done some entrepreneurial work with a motorcycle gang. And I owe them six figures. Oh it's not bad enough I'm dying, but I bring the bikers in and now it's oh. You're not worried about the IRS or the cops? Jeez. You're supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, understanding. Damn. Sick bunch. So um, this is my package, and I go to the doctor. I go to the doctor because I'm looking for a prescription. Because my backache is killing me, and none of my drugs are working for it, and the booze isn't working for it. I'm throwing up blood. I'm not feeling well. So I go to the doctor for a prescription, not for help. Okay, I can fix this because I've done such a hell of a job with my life. So I go in. This is the 70s. So it was like stripped down to your underwear, the doctor will be in a minute. So I'm sitting in my underwear with hair down to my waist, not quite, middle of the back. Um, and I'm green, gray, and yellow. And uh I'm not feeling very well. This doctor walks in the door and he goes, he doesn't introduce himself. He walks halfway in the door and he goes, How much do you dream? And I thought, damn, that's personal. What's the giveaway? But this is one of our gifts. We're very adept at turning the interviewer into the interviewee. I sponsor doctors. I have never sat with a doctor who had more than 30 minutes education on addiction. Your doctor is trained to refer you out. Okay? So I look at him and say, Well, Doc, how much do you drink? And he answers me. He goes, Well, I have a beer watching the game on Tuesday. I might have a cognac with my cigar when I take the wife to the country club on the weekend. I said, Well, me too. I drink twice a week. Monday to Wednesday, Thursday to Sunday. He's like, You don't, you're not asking the right questions. So I'm giving you the answers you want, right? So this is the package we have some lab work done, and uh and he informs me the green, green, and yellow is a thing called uremic poison. Because my liver and kidneys are so beat up they can't clean my blood anymore. And that's why there's blood in my urine, and that's why I'm throwing out blood, because I've torn up my stomach. And that lump in the front is not the happy hour wieners, it's a distended liver. That's not a symptom of social drinking. I'm just saying. If you're new, and so he looks at me and he says, Whatever you're doing, and the quantities you insist you're not doing is killing you. And my internal response was relief. You with me? It was relief. You know what I'm talking about. You're low bottom, you know, it's just like finally this is gonna be over. You know, when I was 12 years old, I wasn't thinking, I can't wait to be dead by 30. I can't wait to ruin every single relationship in my life and destroy happiness and trust and faith. I can't wait. I just can't wait. And so my response was relief. So when you're told um you're gonna die if you don't stop, I'm going, how long? He said, 12 to 18 months. And I'm thinking in my mind, well, if I double up things, I can probably cut that to six or ten months. Because I just want it out. Because my little philosophy of life, my way of being in the world, had run its course. And this thing about alcohol working had stopped years ago. And I was drinking because I had to drink. It's that Chinese accent. The man takes a drink, the drink takes a drink, the drink takes a man or the woman. That's a couple thousand years old. Just saying. It's not like we got a new deal here. But we do have the first time ever of having a recovery method that worked for long-term recovery, not just from the addiction, but from the totally toxic and dysfunctional life. This is about a new life. It's not about not drinking. I work with a lot of people that come out of treatment, and and it seems that what people are getting here is abstinence treatment. We just don't drink and you go to meetings. That's what you do. No, we don't drink, we go to meetings and then we do the steps and we study the book so we can change. Because if you and I don't change, we're dead. And it might take decades or it might take five minutes, but it's gonna be ugly. Right? So I went back to the bar to drink until I didn't wake up. That was my goal. I drank at the biker bar because I drank with impunity. No one can mess with me there because Corky was the president and he I was under his umbrella protection. And I also drank free most of the time, which was convenient. So I don't know how many of you people have been in rough bars, but a biker bar is a fairly rough place. High testosterone levels, and uh a lot of violence. A lot of violence. And so I'm sitting at the bar and I threw a shot back and it came out my nose. That burnt, doesn't it? Yes. And then the first thought is did you see that? Because that's embarrassing, and that is not what you do in a biker bar. Second thought was, how am I gonna get that off the bar without looking like I'm sucking it like a dog? This is a fraction of a second. And my alcoholism came to the rescue with this idea. Clearly, it's an amphetamine deficiency. I know what our primary purpose is, but you read the stories. Bill and Bob, they were mixing and matching. I'll tell you what, at the end of this thing, if you would have told me, grind up your fruit of the looms, throw them in the oven at 445 for an hour and a half, and you get some relief, I'd have done it. Because there was no relief. There was no relief anywhere, and nothing was working. So I took a handful of speed because I always had it in my pocket, because you gotta stay awake to drink. Not because I love speed. Hello, it's an alcohol enhancer. Because I can't not drink. I got a pint by my bed. I wake up in the middle of the night shaking, sweating. I gotta have a I gotta have a hit. So um I couldn't swallow. Now I had stolen a big book from my dad, who sobered up ten years before me, and uh I'd read it, I think, somewhere between four and six times, drunk. If you've done that, you know it might as well be in Arabic. Because there's nothing happening there. Nothing cognitively that I know is happening there. So I thought I read the book. I said, that's not for me. I'm down with the first step. I'm powerless, obviously. And my life's unmanageable, obviously. But then I was an evangelical and somewhat militant atheist. So your references to higher power, I knew, meant God. And I already made my decisions about God when I was ten years old. If there is a God, I'm evidently paying a karmic debt because I got I see no God in action in my life. I see no protection, I see no safety, I have no usable idea. So I quit the church when I was ten. And uh so I walked out of the bar crying. I hadn't cried since I was a little boy because my dad taught me really early men don't cry. That's weak. And if you're weak, people will use that on you. So you just suck it up. We don't cry. And I started crying, I was alone. It's about uh 14 miles northeast of here, and uh this is my first step. I'm done, I'm toast, I can't do this. Oh, that's not right. Yes, it is. Because it's honest, it's authentic, and it's right from my heart. I'm done, I'm toast, I can't do this. And when I had that thought come through me, it wasn't something I came up with, it was something that came through me. I knew on a cellular level that was the truth. I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't know what I was gonna do with it, but I knew I had it reached the point of no further. And if you've done this, you know this when you start out, when you hit what we colloquially call our bottoms, it doesn't feel like oh, my new life is just dawning on the horizon. This is gonna be so good. No, you think, Jesus, I'm just out of bullets. I'm out of bullets. I got not a single idea that I haven't already done at least hundreds of times. And that empty place is a space for God to work. I didn't know that because I don't believe in God. Guess what? It doesn't matter if I believe in God or not, that God exists, or a higher power, or a spirit of the universe, or creative intelligence, or the creator, or Yahweh, or whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter. It exists, and the evidence of it is in all the different things humanity has called this power, it's always worked for the people that practice it and believe the principles of it. So I'm done, I'm toast I can't do this. God says, Gotcha. I go back and I do a detox in a flop with two guys. One is dead from drinking, the other is either in prison or he's dead. And I said, Gentlemen, I'm gonna kick and I need you to watch me. I don't want you to let me jump out the window and uh keep me on my side. I talked about aspiration, I talked about all the stuff that they were gonna have to watch for. And uh those two guys, God bless them, sat with me 24 hours a day. They drank in the corner and I was their entertainment. Oh, look at him, he's doing the crappie flop again. And speaking in tongues, yeah, and hallucinating and seizing. So I didn't think in that moment. I'm done, I'm toast, I can't do this, I would never pick up again. So the journey began. What's the journey? Finding God, finding, establishing, and growing a relationship with a God of your understanding, not a God of my understanding. A God of your understanding which will veel itself, himself, herself, whatever self, to you in a manner by which you can understand it, relate to it, and get a hold of it. So I told you I was playing. So the first thing that was beyond my imagination and control and conception was the cessation of the drinking. Okay, a weak detox, my first coherent thought. You remember in the story of Fred the Accountant? He goes on the binge that he never thought he'd go on, and then he's in the hospital, and his brain's clearing, and he says, I remember what those guys told me. Those AA guys told me what happened. It turns out they were right. So I remember when my brain came back on online, and the first coherent thought I had was, Well, I'm sure not going to AA. I'll do this my way. I'll do this my way, is how I got here. Right? The little picture I gave you of Roger's willpower in action. It was good because I didn't have a single person to call or a friend left. Because if I would have, I would have used you. Nothing. So I go back and I'm playing in the clubs, because we were playing clubs then. And uh the next thing happened, which was way beyond my imagination control, which was what? I'm in my wheelhouse. This is free booze, free drugs, and available women. That's like 90-95% of my four step. Just saying. And nothing had any pull, any attraction. It's described in the 10th step, placed in a position of neutrality. Haven't even sworn it off. But I haven't done the step set. It doesn't matter. This is grace, this is mercy. I don't believe in that stuff. Doesn't mean it can't happen. I just don't know how to identify it. So now I'm in this position where all the things that were the things that got me in trouble have been just I've just been free of it. I'm not fighting it. It just I just look at you and I go, no, thanks. Can we buy a drink? I don't think so. We're good. Or I'll have a club sort of with a twist of lime. That's not drinking. And then the other one that happened all the time. Sober bartenders. Anyone? Sober bartenders? God. I would wait down to the waster station, and when she was gone, I'd the bartender come down and say, Give me a club with a twist of lime. And she'd go, Oh, are you a friend of Bill's? And they go, No! No, I'm not a friend of Bill's, just give me the drink. Bill. Welcome to my world. So I backed into this whole thing. I just backed into the whole thing. So I get sober. I'm going to meetings up on the north side. They're all black meetings up on the north side. Because I don't want to go down here because my old man's here in the suburbs. And I'm so tired of being Don's son. So I'm going to do this my way. I'm going to these meetings, and they got to let me in. And they call me a gray boy. Because they weren't sure I wasn't completely Caucasian. And they, you know, that's fine. So I'm doing all this. I'm doing some salvation army meetings. I'm doing things where I think nobody knows. I got this bass player I grew up with, Jimmy. And uh this is how God works in my life. And Jim would call me and say, Are you still sober? I'd go, Yeah, man. I'm really sober. He'd say, Will you help me? I said, Jimmy, I love you. Of course I'll help you. And I'd run over to where he was living or the bush he was living in. Sometimes he was homeless, sometimes living in his car, sometimes he had a place. And uh and I'd give him one hour, maybe 90 minutes of my kick-ass one-step program. And we'd be hugging and crying, I love you, I love you too. Okay. And then two weeks later, you called me, Are you still sober? And this is going on and on and on. And I've heard some things in meetings that I didn't know I was hearing. Home group. That's like home bar. Okay. For the new people. Home group, home bar, you know, where you do your business. Okay? Then I heard about sponsor. No, thank you. I'll pass. You know that line: if you want what we have and you're willing to go at any length to get it, I listened to a guy do a story for 90 minutes of what a total disaster he is, and then he says, Hey, if you want what I have, and you're willing to go to any length to get it, come talk to me. And I'm thinking, what do you have? What do you have? I can do that good. So I got Jimmy, and I'm hearing this stuff about meetings and stuff, and so I heard something about a thing called Intergroup. And I went down and I bought a directory, and I picked two random meetings. Men's Step Monday night. Men's Big Book Wednesday night. 2400 Club down in Blazedale. I said, Jimmy, you come with me. What's my motive? Is it I want to help another suffering alcohol? No. No, it's I want to get rid of Jim. And I'm gonna bring him to the meeting, and one of you guys are gonna sponsor him, and I can get back to my one-step program. Nice motive. The hand of AA. So I'm taking Jim to this meeting. And none of you guys are stepping up. I'm getting a little pissed. And it's one month, it's three months, it's six months. Jim's never had this much time. And I'm getting more and more pissed. None of you guys are stepping up. What about the hand of AE? Where's that? Well, they all thought I was sponsoring him. So we get we get to a year. Oh, it's a miracle. The miracle is that we get here. The steps are a process that promises us we can transform and ultimately transcend the condition we arrived with. That's a spiritual process. That's way different than we don't drink and go to meetings. So Jim gets a year, it's the birthday time and the cake, you know, it's a miracle. And then about 14 months in, Jim gets a scholarship to go back to college. And Jim majors in psychology. Mistake. He's drunk in two months. I said goodbye to Jim in a nursing home. He died of cirrhosis. And Roger stayed in those two meetings for 15 years. Where I met. What are you clapping about? It wasn't me. I stayed in those meetings for 15 years. And there were some really interesting characters, none of whom I related to. Now here's the picture. I'm a rock and roll musician. I got hair down on the middle of my back. I live in black leather. None of these guys looked like me. They're all old. They were like 50, 60. I'm 74. I'm now that guy in my meetings. The old guy in the corner, yes. But you can't see what this is by looking at it. You have to get in it to understand it. You know, I'd come in before the meeting, get a little cup of coffee, and these guys would be like, oh, that's a three. You need to do a six and seven on that. You better do a ten and eleven on that. And I'm thinking, is there a code book here? I'm totally confused. What the hell are you talking about? And then this is this is my early service work. Guy'd be arguing with, a new guy would be arguing with one of the old timers in the front, and I'd be in the back because I was always in the back with my arms folded, Terry. Right? With that look that said, I have a grenade and the pin's out. Just stay the hell away from me. And they did. They just, they, they honored it. And I'd sit back there with my scowl, and Mel would be working with some new guy and said, Look at you see the guy back there? Yeah. Do you want to be like him? No. Then let's do some step work. Not service work, isn't it? I mean, I almost died. So this is the package. I'm 18 months sober. I haven't done an amend. Why would I do an amend? That's way down the steps. I got a one-step program. Here's my argument. This is my perspective. This is my point of view with no recovery, but abstinence, sitting in meetings, restless, irritable, pissed off. And the other thing that happens is you start remembering more and more the longer you stay sober, yes? And everything I'm remembering is like, oh Jesus. No, that too. Oh yeah. You did what? To who? How many times? So I'm uh, you can probably tell this, but I'll just, if you're new, I'll just tell you. This is what sponsoring yourself looks like. So I'm home having a meeting. You know, you're laughing because you did it too. I got five or six voices going to my head, and they're all yelling, and they're all oppositional. And sometimes they wake up at two in the morning. Hey, we're having a meeting. And you guys are getting better, and I'm getting worse. And I don't get it. I don't see. This is the delusion of my ism. I can't see that I'm not doing what you're doing. I think I'm in recovery because I'm in the room with you. That's the meeting. That's not recovery. You know this from your own meetings. There's a lot of people in the meetings that aren't in recovery. Right? Just saying, not judging. I got my experience, you got yours, okay? So forget what I was gonna say. What am I saying? Help me up. He's not listening either. Sponsored yourself, yes. Thank you. And back to the meeting. Right? And I in my early recovery, I listened to a lot of tapes. They're little rectangular plastic things. Just after eight tracks. Anyway, um, my parents started this library in 72, and I'd go out to the old man's house and I'd say, Hey, what do you got? And he'd give me a handful of tapes to go listen to. I could not drop my shield in the meeting, but I'd sit at home alone because I was very alone, and I'd put a tape on it and listen, and it just ripped me up because I could identify, but I couldn't get there. I couldn't get there. So I'm having this experience, and it's driving me literally nuts. So I'm thinking about how I'm gonna kill myself. I got 18 months, and I'm thinking, well, open a vein, open a couple, put some plastic down in the bathroom. We don't want to make a mess for people to clean up. You want to be considerate. And then I'm imagining the razor blade and opening my arm, and I'm thinking, shit, that's probably gonna hurt. Well, it gets better. And then the voice says, Well, maybe a couple of drinks. You'll ruin your sobriety. So then I remember this this guy, and he was talking about hanging himself. Now, by virtue of the fact that I remember him telling a story about hanging himself, he probably didn't succeed. I don't remember that part, I just remember the the step by step. So he went in the garage, got a chair, threw the belt over the rafter, tying it around his neck, and jumped off the chair.

unknown 41:42

Yeah.

Long Amends And Learning Integrity

Prayer, Meditation, And Daily Maintenance

Trusting Timing, Grace, And A Life Unimagined

Boats On A River: Lasting Impact And Closing

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Oops. It was an elastic belt. So I decided gun. Because tough guys always have weapons, you know. And I so I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonna blow my brains out. So I put my pistol in my mouth, and this is how God spoke to me. Mighty small caliber. You don't want to die with a question like that on your mind. I thought about it. It's a 22 long, but it's a hollow point. It'll tumble. We'll be fine. Then I put it back in the second time, and I had a memory that I hadn't had in years. I went to high school with a kid named Patrick. In tenth grade, he tried to blow his head off with a shotgun, put the barrel in his mouth, he was in his underwear, and when he pushed the trigger with his big toe, he moved the stock, and he blew an eye in the side of his face off, and he lived. Had about 18 reconstructive surgeries, and a couple years later, he hung himself for Christmas at his parents' house. The next thought was that'll be my luck. I'll pull the trigger, I'll wake up in the hospital, paralyzed from the cheekbones down, and old Mel from the Big Book meeting will be standing there going, Raj. Do you want to do the steps now? Blink once for yes, twice for no. You are ruthless. Oh Jesus, this is not going well. I'm sweating. When I tell this story, it's it's funny out here, but in here I can taste the gun oil still. And I put it in the third time, and I pulled the hammer back, and a voice appeared. You know, if you're sitting talking and you put your hand by your ear, you can hear, you can hear your voice. It was just like there was a mouth next to my ear, and it's a line right out of Bill's story. And it asked the question. It said, Are you even willing to believe it? The possibility. And I heard yes. I did not hear yes from here. Not from my head. It came from somewhere else that was totally foreign to me. I heard yes. And the gun came out, and I became an agnostic. Yay! So I go back to my meetings and I'm telling the guys about my spiritual experience. I took my second step at gunpoint. Because the seventh step says, came to believe, which is the past tense. The idea that there is a power and it could restore you to sanity or wholeness, that's just an idea. Where are you at with the idea? Is you willing to say yes? Yes would be hypocritical. No, I wouldn't say yes, but now I'm willing to believe in the possibility. The mind has just opened a crack. And it occurred to me. Powerless. This is what they're talking about, isn't it? I've been wrong. I've been wrong. Then the next thought was the real icebreaker. I wonder what else I could be wrong about. Everything. Everything. So I took my second step. I know there's a power because the cessation of the drinking, the removal of the temptation, that was not my doing. I couldn't do that. I've been trying to do that for years. So I had evidence, but I couldn't say, oh, that's my higher power. Oh, that's God. I said, that's a phenomenon. I've observed it and it's real to me, but I don't have any idea of the source. And frankly, I don't even know if it's gonna stick around. Well, it did. So now can an agnostic do the steps? You bet. You bet. So what does my third step look like? Does it look like that beautiful prayer we have? No. What it looks like is this I'm sitting in a meeting and I'm listening to these guys talk about their recovery and how it works. And it works really beautifully because I see an emotional equilibrium that I don't have. My cancer came back. Guess I'm gonna have to pray more. He's like, what? My wife left me. Oh, my wife came back. Oh but what I'm saying is these guys were going through life, like we all are, but they did it in a way that they seemed to float above it. They didn't get sucked in to the drama or the dualistic right, wrong, good, bad, up, down. They didn't have that. And it was very powerful, even though I didn't know what it was. So one night they were talking, we were doing a step study, and they were talking about the third step. And I've heard this, and you've heard this too. I called the A love story. I met Harold 42 years ago, took my last drink that afternoon, and I've been with Harold for 42 years. And let me tell you, we're in the kitchen, put a candle in the floor, we're on our knees, holding hands, and we said the third step. I don't hold hands with men, but we we said the third step prayer, and the room filled up, and my life just took off. If you think that's what's supposed to happen, you're gonna be sorely disappointed. Some of you will have that experience. I know some people that had that experience, not mine. And if I think I'm supposed to have that experience or Bill's experience, the last time he was in the hospital, the room fills up. No, no, no. I'm supposed to have my experience. Right? And so they're talking about the third step, and I'm thinking about it. I know what it says. You're gonna make a decision to change your will in your life, that you're thinking in your actions over the care of this power. I'm too formal. Too many things to cop do there. But here's my third step. I'm going for it. I don't even know where it came from. It came through me. I didn't manufacture this. It came through me. I'm going for it. That's what the third step is. It's a decision based on the premise of the first and second step. I'm powerless over the substance. I'm powerless to manage my life. It's not that you can't manage your life, it's when you do, it sucks. And so, based on those two conclusions, I must need to find, have to find an additional guidance or additional power to add to the party. And the third step is the decision to go for that. And the decision manifests in 4 through 12. It's sustained in 10 through 12. But I gotta get there first. So I gotta take some things apart. Not easy, not fun, but necessary. And so I did it. And I changed, and I didn't know I changed. You know how I found out I changed? I've been around A for a couple years. No one ever asked me to sponsor them. I can't imagine why. Don't you want what I had? Right? So I took myself through these steps with some tapes and stuff, and I did it the best of my ability. That's the only thing that's required, the best of your ability. Just backtrack. So I'm in it, I'm in the meeting with an attitude. I'd say I'm about a 10% guy. Maybe 10% into this thing. But you know what? I was 100% of the 10%. I wasn't sitting around signing off on stuff that I didn't believe. I wasn't saying, not me, not me. I can't get there. Sorry. Good for you. Not me. So I took myself through these steps, and a funny thing started happening 42 years ago. Guys started coming to me. Can I talk to you after the meeting? Yeah. Right. So we sit down and said, Well, I've been watching you. I said, okay. He said, first I gotta tell you something. What's that? I don't like you. Well, I don't like you either. What's the second thing? Right? I've been watching you and I think you're really doing this thing. I'm on paper. If I violate, I'm going back and I'm doing another bit 20 years. I'm not doing that. I will blow my brains out first. Will you help me? Yeah, I'll help you. What's that gonna look like? We're gonna go through the book. You know, we agree there's a problem, that's not what the problem is. What we don't agree with is what the problem is. You can say all day long, I agree I'm an alcoholic, but if you don't want to take the solution for that problem, nothing changes except it gets worse. Right? So I said, we'll go through the book. And every time we come to a thing that you don't like, we'll we'll discuss it. We're not gonna argue, we're gonna discuss it until I can get you to wrap your head and your heart around that idea so you can proceed in a way that makes sense for you. Because it's gotta be real for you. And I'm just trying to help you find what's real for you and deal with the impediments, which are the arguments, which is the closed-mindedness, the intolerance. And you agree to do it. So you have access to me 24-7. Because you're new and you're crazy. You're gonna need access, right? And here's my phone. You can look at every text on my phone, you can look at every picture in my phone, you can look at every voicemail on my phone. In fact, you're homeless, you can come with me and follow me around work, and you can listen to every conversation I have. Oh, here's my computer. You can go through that. Look at all the files. What am I telling him? I have nothing to hide. That's scarier than hell for a new guy. Because when we get here, we have everything to hide. Right? When I came in and I looked at you, I thought I would trade the whole deal to have what you have. Because I was so broken and disgusted with myself. Today I wouldn't trade with anyone. Uh-uh. So these guys started coming to me, and I thought, this is weird. And then a bunch of gay guys came to me and I sponsored them, and I helped every one of those guys die. Because in those days it was AIDS and it was not treatable, and they had been ostracized from their community and their families, and I just got to love them. I just loved them. And I thought, this is so weird. Why is this happening? Most of the people that come to me, I work with a lot of felons. I just love those guys, they just gravitate towards me. So you do what's put in front of you, right? I'm not someone that works well with high-bottom drunks. They don't even like me. They don't even want to be around me. They can't even relate to the story. I ran over Shrub. My wife said I should get an assessment. I got an assessment. They said I should go to treatment. I went to treatment. They said I should go to AA. I went to AA. I got the sponsor. Everything's beautiful. Thank you very much. Not my experience. I think you get the idea. I uh it took me 16 years to finish my financial amends. You know how I started my financial amends? I was at a meeting I'd never been to before, south of town. I got$60,000 worth of credit card debt. I only know for sure I bought a set of tires. And the bad checks and all that stuff, right? And I'm down at this meeting. These guys are all talking about filing bankruptcy. Bankruptcy? Chapter 7. I'm going, ooh. Never thought of that. Right? And so I'm at the coffee break, and I swear to God, this old man comes up next to me, and he goes, I must have, have you ever been thinking something then? You went, did I just say that out loud? And I went, I must have said it. I said, maybe I'll file bankruptcy. And this old man, I've never, he elbows me. He I said, What? And he said, Did you buy it? I said, Yeah. He said, then pay for it. And I said, well, what about the bikers? They're criminals. So are you. Pay for it. And I thought, well, you're dead. But it was one of those things. I left, I thought, good point. And this is how I started my financial means. Whoever that guy was, I never saw him again. And I said, screw you, I'll show you. I'll pay that damn money off. Not exactly high principle. But it worked. It worked. It got me on the path. It was the wrong motive, but the motive changes after time. You know, one of my big amends was to my parents, financially and otherwise. But here's an example. So I go out to my old man, I'm, I don't know, eight, ten years sober. And I said, Papa, we gotta talk about the money. I have no much, I have no idea how much money I owe you, but I want to start making it right. And he goes, Oh, just a minute. And he opens the drawer, he was an engineer and pulls out this graph paper with every penny I've conned him out of in 35 years. So I started making payments. Just a little bit, because I couldn't, I can't overcommit, but I gotta be able to make that payment. This is this is the subtlety of this thing, this the spiritual transformation, the change, the transformation that happens to us when you do the right thing, even if it's not the right motive, right? Jim and the meetings. So I'm writing these checks every month for years. And the checks get bigger because I'm getting more debt paid off. And I have horrible handwriting. But you know, in the lower left corner of a check, some of you probably don't know what checks are anymore, but they're little pieces of paper we agreed on. And uh, can I get some water? And so in the bottom left corner, memo, in very clear and dark ink, blocked letters, financial amend. And I would bring it out to the old man, and thank you, and I'd bring him the check. There you go, Pop. Okay. Did it forever. And then I went out one time after doing this for several years, and he said, Your mom and I have discussed it and we're canceling the rest of your debt. And I said, You can't do that. That's how much it changed me to do the amend. And I didn't even know. Integrity, Lori was talking about integrity, someone was talking about integrity. He was barked. I don't know. Integrity? Honesty. And change. I did the right thing for the right reason, and I ended up with a result that I couldn't imagine. I got free. I got free. So had to learn to pray, had to learn to meditate. That's a bitch. For an atheist, come on, give me a break. Think about this. You come in here, and one of the things you hear common in the fellowship is no major decisions for the first year. Got it? Right. Just create a theology. I think that's rather major. Just saying. It doesn't have to be complete. It's just a starting point. It's just a starting point. So that phenomenon turned into a mystery. Can you make a decision to will your life over to the mystery? Yeah, I can. Because I got evidence that there's something working in and through my life. That was the basis of the beginning. It's supposed to evolve. It's not going to be, it's not going to be the same as it was 44 years ago. It evolves with practice and application. But you have to have a starting point that makes sense to you. Then the prayer and the meditation is about connection. Connection. Tenth step is my relationship to people, glazes, things, and circumcision. Man's world. Three dimensions. Okay? Observation, point of view, reaction. Keeps me right with you. The 11th step is the vertical axis, keeps me right with the power. Keeps me connected to the power. Perfectly? No. But when I screw up, I know how to get back. I know the way back and I practice the way back. And pretty soon, you know, I've had uh a couple good days in a row. Then I had a good week in a row. Mel, that Marine I told you about, Mel used to, every time I come to the meeting and say, Are you praying, Raj? Atheists don't pray, Mel. And I started praying because I really fell in love with Mel. He's a great guy over time. And I didn't want to disappoint him. So he said, Every day you hit your knees in the morning and you ask God for another day of sobriety. And every night you hit your knees and thank God for another day of sobriety. I don't know about you, I don't like being told what to do or how to do it. Right? So I'm listening to this. Yeah, Mel, yeah, right. So I didn't want to keep coming in twice a week and saying, no, Mel, I'm not praying. So I said, I'll try it. I'll just pray a little bit. So my prayer wasn't Mel's prayer. This was my prayer. Thanks for another shitty day. And after about 10 months, I realized I've been turning out some really consistent poor days. Maybe there's something to this prayer thing. And I started tweaking it. You gotta experiment with this. You gotta find out what works for you. What works is what is what creates the connection. And that's the seeking of the 11th step. Prayer and meditation is the vehicle. The goal is conscious contact with the power. Hello. And 10 and 11 are supposed to continue for a lifetime. And you could throw 12 on top. Right? So, what does the 10th step say? Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When they crap up, do this. Ask God to remove it. Talk to someone immediately, make it immense if necessary. Resolutely turn your thinking to someone you can help. It's a drunk trap. If you were incomplete, like I was incomplete, here's the deal. I inventory. I know it's a stretch, but I just realized I talked to this guy for about 15 minutes, and most of it was a lie. So just the inventory, just catching that is a four-step principle. I inventoried, I examined. Why did I do that? Because I made a decision in the third step to turn myself towards something better. Why'd I do that? Because I gotta find the power by which I can live and live with. Why'd I do that? Because of the first step, I'm powerless. So then it says, ask God to move it, there's six and seven. Talk to someone immediately, there's five. Now we get the first seven steps, right? Make it amends of necessary, there's eight and nine. Then resolutely turn your thinking to someone you can help, there's twelve. Hello. That's your daily practice. Well, guess what? If you're not practicing that, you're gonna be practicing something. Because we're practicing all the time. Everybody's got a program. The question isn't, do you have a program? The question is, how is it working? And if it's not working, the next question is, are you interested in tweaking that a little bit? Yes, are you interested in getting a little better results? So the steps transformed me, they started to change me and living out of 10, 11, and 12, which is a discipline, and it takes time to develop the discipline. But I don't think Bart was talking about this yesterday, I don't think I missed the morning prayer and reading the decades. But I didn't start out that way because I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do. Because I sponsored myself, and we have conflicting views. So, bottom line, I've established and I've grown a connection with the God of my understanding, and it's transformed my life. It's transformed all my relationships, it's transformed my parenting, it's transformed how I be a friend, it's transformed how I be a sponsor. And I trust God. We say that I trust God. Now the answer to that question is can you trust God's timing? Ooh, yeah, you heard me. Ooh. You mean I can't have it right now? Maybe not. So off we go, and we experiment and we change and we grow. And this is so, so beautiful because you end up with a life, you hear all these speakers say it. I end up with a life that wasn't even on the menu. I have qualities and people in my life today that I would never ever imagine. You know, we go through life and we have effects, and we don't know the effects all the time. We don't know the effects. One of those guys from that meeting, I'll close with this, um, Tommy was a Vietnam vet. Really pissed off. And uh a bigot. And uh he was like, when he came into the meeting, you just think someone ought to pat this guy down. And uh so about a year ago, I got a little message. Are you Roger from 2400? And I went, yeah? Are you pregnant? What? No. Sorry, that was a cheap joke. Yeah, it's me. He said, It's me, Tommy. And I went, oh shit. It's 40 years later. And we started talking. He said, I just wanted to thank you for the help you gave me when I was new in those first few years. I thought, I didn't even like you. What help are we talking about, right? And then we went on to talk. And uh, he had spent his whole career working with vets with PTSD out at the veterans' home. And he just retired, he was living on a lake with his wife, and then he sent me pictures of his kids, and God took care of the bigotry. You know what? His daughter married a black guy. He's got all these beautiful brown babies. Look at my babies, look at my babies. God put a bow on it. And so the next little while I was meditating on this, and this is the image that came. The metaphor of the river. Life is a river, it's a huge river. You can't see the other side. And it on the surface it appears to be going pretty slowly. And there's some bumps, there's some rapids, and there's some rocks, and there's a lot of boats in the river. There's a Terry boat, there's a Roger boat, there's a Ben boat. Susan boat, all these boats. Tommy boat, mailboat. And every once in a while the boats come together. And sometimes they stay together for just a little while. And sometimes they stay together for years. Some of those boats have stayed, I stayed tied to for decades. But the thing is that we when our boats separate, there's a little bit of your boat on my boat, and a little bit of my boat on your boat. And we're never the same again. Because there's a piece of me with you, and there's a piece of you with me. And that's the magic. That's the God in action. And you don't know what's happening. And then some guy calls you from 40 years later and you go, holy moly, look at that. And then the next question, well, how much of that's going on all the time? How much of that is happening all the time? Because we're together. People are sharing their stories, people are sharing their lives, and that's energy. And that energy is all getting mixed together. And it has an effect. You might not have the effect tonight. You might have the effect a year from now or five years from now. Oh, that's what that's what Georgie was talking about. Yeah. That's what Bart meant. Oh. That's what Lori meant. Oh. And the light goes off. It was a seed that got planted, and you didn't know even got planted. Thanks for your time. God bless.