AA - Alcoholics Anonymous
April 26, 2022
(0:00 – 56:12)
Thank you. Thank you Guy and hi everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I’m an
alcoholic. Can you hear me in the back? Okay this microphone only goes to the tape it
doesn’t go out here so I got to get there myself.
I’m really honored to be asked over here and Chris and Guy are pretty good friends of
mine and so for them it doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. I was thinking of just a
different way of getting at our steps and I decided to take the self-centered approach
because not everyone in the room relates to that I don’t have to explain it to anyone
what that is because if you look at it the steps are really designed to take away self centeredness and that is the root of our problems and it’s not just our problems
everybody is self-centered and as they grow up and mature which we don’t do they
make a dent in being self-centered but alcoholics found a shortcut to growing up it’s
called drinking and we solved all of the problems along the way by simply pouring
alcohol down and so when we get here we’re probably about 13 years old emotionally
and we got a long way to go and they our literature everywhere says self-centeredness
is the root of our problems and it really is it’s one of the most difficult things to make a
dent in and the reason is it’s so powerfully ingrained in us it starts when we’re really little
I don’t know exactly how old I had six kids and I can’t remember exactly when it
happened but somewhere a little after one-year-old something different happens up till
that time the baby seemed to be just looking around taking it all in you know what I
mean over here over here and you’d go in their crib and you’d hand them a bear then
you’d come in take the bear away and give them a ball oh a ball and they just were like
observing the show and so far no problem no self-centeredness one day you give them
the bear and you come over to take the bear away and give them the ball and they say
mine that’s the new game in town up till then the world was two-dimensional it was all
that stuff going on out there but now there’s a third dimension me and we suddenly
realize this isn’t a drama that we’re watching this is a drama that’s happening to us the
whole universe is happening to us that’s when you’re the center and you see things let’s
see I like that person because she adds to my world every time grandmother comes over
she gives me two cookies so she gets a plus on the other hand this uncle smokes a cigar
in my face all the time he takes away from my world so I start keeping track of what’s
fair and what isn’t fair and what adds to my little world and what takes away from my
little world and it’s my job to make sure that I get as much as possible in my little world
because nobody else is taking care of it nobody else even knows about it because
they’re so busy in their own little world and then as we get older and we’re out more
walking around I can remember being in my backyard and kind of taking it all in and I
looked over at the neighbor’s house and I looked over here where the school was and
then I turned around and saw down the road to where the farms were and then I looked
over here and saw the highway going into town so I had all this Vista all around me of all
these other things but guess what was at the center of it me so I don’t know how people
couldn’t end up self-centered where they feel wherever they are they’re the center of
what’s going on and I look at it as we live in our own little world it’s one of my favorite
ways to think about self-centeredness and we used to say that as an insult that well you
know her she lives in her own little world well so do you and so does everybody else and
those worlds are just made of thoughts that’s the only building material there is to build
the world that you live in are all the collected thoughts that you put in there and the
most important part of a thought is the adjective rotten scary no good unfair and see
events that happen don’t come with adjectives they just happen it rains the farmer goes
oh wonderful it’s raining the golfer go he’s ruined my whole day so the event itself is just
happens and so we’re the one who creates this world that we live in by our thinking and
most of us put together a rather unpleasant place to live but it’s least at least it’s ours
and we made it and even though it’s lousy we’re reluctant to change it even when
people end up in jail they go what do you think about that they said well maybe I’ll write
a book about jail someday so this isn’t the worst experience in the world and it’s my
rotten life but I did it it gets so bad that we actually think that we exist in addition to the
universe and that was Chuck Chamberlain’s big point is that there’s everything else and
then there’s me and in our literature talks about God being everything God’s everything
and in addition to everything there’s me and I’m being affected badly by everything I’m
not even part of my own family all alcoholics had that feeling that there’s the family unit
and then there’s me I’m not really part of it I’m over here that self-centeredness in the
extreme and we just stay in there and the one of the nice things when you are selfcentered is you’re in charge there’s nobody in that world making you change it or
making you do anything when you go hide in your own little world and so in order to feel
comfortable anywhere we run across alcohol and boy does that change the ballgame
that just changes everything we suddenly seem to fit in I had my third three drinks and
then all the people in the bar that look so mean look pretty cool I like this place I like this
new world it’s safe to come out of my world into this one and that’s why we loved alcohol
so much it was the only way we knew to get out of being self-centered was to drink and
since it was that important to us we were willing to pay any price whereas a nonalcoholic this is not solving all their problems it’s giving them some happiness they feel a
little better than it did before but this is not the secret of life like it was for us where we
just when we drank it transformed the world that we lived in and our opinion of ourselves
and we became bigger and they became smaller and we became more powerful and
they became less threatening and it was a wonderful way to solve the problem of selfcenteredness except when we sobered up it was worse because of all the stuff that
happened the night before and it doesn’t matter how hard you beat on this thing you
could try to go in there and get me out of that self-centered cage and I wasn’t coming
out I probably never would have come out except for alcohol alcohol finally takes us
down so low that we actually stick our hand out of that world and ask for help that is the
only way that ego got cracked was by that hand coming out and when you look at our
literature and the history and everything great spiritual writers have pointed this out that
the only way people crack an ego like that and can begin a spiritual journey is from
hitting a bottom it’s the magic ingredients so as it’s happening it doesn’t look like much
of a blessing it’s hard to picture the cop that is giving you a DWI as an angel from
heaven who’s about to change your whole life by forcing you into detox and when you
get into detox it didn’t look like the greatest thing that ever happened in your life but for
those of us that made it out of there into AA we look back on it as that’s the greatest
thing that ever happened to me was getting that DWI or in my case getting a grand mal
seizure and spending six months in the nut ward I did not see that as a big blessing so
you can see self-centeredness gets a little bit of door daylight coming in because you
had to surrender you had to just open it up enough so you could get help for your alcohol
problem you didn’t open it any wider all we want is to get sober will continue to run our
world and that’s the problem of self-centeredness we give up little pieces of our territory
very grudgingly it’s I don’t like turning over more of my world if I turned it all over as Bill
writes in the third step in the twelve and twelve I’d become the hole in the donut I would
be a non-entity I wouldn’t be in charge of anything and so it’s in that spot that we find
ourselves arriving at AA and beginning this journey through the twelve steps and the
first step that we encounter capitalizes on that very bottom that we hit you see how see
how down you are you see how down you are when you’re really powerless and they
finally get us to say the word powerless yeah yeah okay okay but I’m only powerless
over alcohol don’t go messing with all the rest of that stuff I’m I’m going to admit that I
am powerless over alcohol and so our literature capitalizes on that and I don’t know how
many pages it is but they must spend about 50 pages on the first step and they want to
just hammer home how powerless we really are in the beginning we have a rough idea
about how bad it is and if you have a good sponsor he’ll show you that it’s five times
worse than you thought it was and if he does that or she does that they just did a good
job with the first step they pointed out it’s much worse than you I thought that I simply
had to not put alcohol in my mouth and everything would be fine I’d been locked up for
six months I lost my career as a pilot in the Marine Corps and I just I’m smart didn’t take
me that long in that nut ward to go you know I think I better not drink anymore that’s
what I think I can see now that damn stuff really brought me down I had a good
education I’m did well I got six kids I’m here I am and that stuff just buried me so boy I
understand completely that I shouldn’t drink and in my opinion that was sufficient to
carry me through the rest of my life I figured it was the same as finding out what food
allergy you had that was getting you all screwed up and rashes and dry heaving and you
can’t hardly breathe and finally they tell you tomatoes is it and you go really yep if you
never eat another tomato you’ll never have any of those symptoms and you go wow
that’s good enough for me and we just don’t eat any more tomatoes we don’t go to
meetings with other people who can’t eat tomatoes and ask them how they got through
the tomato soup on the table tonight were you thinking about it was it tempting you and
none of that we just went forget it I’m just not gonna need any more tomatoes and life is
fine because we accepted to the depth of our soul that we can’t eat any more tomatoes
and we accept to the depth of our soul that we can’t drink and we’re nowhere near home
yet that’s why we have to explain the first step that’ll never keep you sober how do you
like that it’ll never keep you sober accepting to your very soul that you can’t drink why
do I say that you read our literature and you find out we have no defense against the
first drink there’s gonna come a time when in spite of all of this knowledge acceptance
and all of that we’re gonna sit there and say something like the guy in the big book and
then I just thought a little whiskey in the milk remember that story would be a good idea
there’s a guy’s on a business deal everything’s going good and he goes yeah you know
what I think I’ll just have a little whiskey in this milk and BAM he’s off for a couple years
before he comes back that is why we die of alcoholism that’s what kills us is the fact that
in spite of knowing to our very soul that if we drink it’ll probably kill us we say to the
bartender I have a beer please that’s why we need the twelve steps because of that
insanity and that is classic for every alcoholic you listen to people who’ve gone back out
and they will tell you stories very similar to that they will just tell you well I was in AA
and I was working the steps and it made me feel wonderful and I knew that it had turned
me into a much better person and I just felt stronger than I used to be and it didn’t feel
like I needed the program as bad as I used to I wasn’t in as bad shape so I missed a
couple meetings but I still felt just as good as if I was going to meetings matter of fact I
missed a couple weeks worth of meetings and I still felt just as good now how do you
explain that to yourself I feel just as good without meetings as I do with meetings this is
called the setup from the movie The Sting now you let him go two weeks and he feels
just as good as when he goes to meetings what conclusion do you draw probably don’t
need as many meetings as I used to I am in a different shape than I used to be in blah
blah blah blah blah and then someone says how about a little wine with dinner and you
go well a little wine couldn’t hurt I was a vodka drinker there’s no way a little wine and
here we go here we go with all the evidence we have we still get drunk again so there’s
something that has to come in and fill that gap there’s something that has to come in
and protect us at all times so that that insanity never wins and that something is a power
greater than ourselves and when we’re new we understand this powerlessness they’ve
led us through this first step yeah okay I see it I see it in your life son man oh yeah yeah
yeah yeah well you’re going to now approach this second step and we’re gonna have to
start talking about a power greater than yourself and you go oh that God thing well you
could call it that we call it God yeah I know the God thing you want me to get into the
God thing now well let me explain myself have you all done this let me explain no yeah I
don’t even want to hear the word God it bothers me I grew up for rotten church but a lot
of them and it’s these religions have started more wars around the world I hate them I
hate them all I don’t want anything to do with God and so if you have a good sponsor
they go well let’s not deal with that yet why don’t you just keep an open mind and we’ll
keep going to meetings and you’ll notice our literature is beautiful how we finesse the
God issue for a while until the person starts seeing how happy people are around them
or her and they keep talking about God and then you go to a speaker meeting and
somebody’s up there and they’re telling your story yeah I was in the nut work for six
months and I hated God I grew up a little bit of luck and my sponsor said why don’t you
just keep an open that’s how well what the heck maybe I’ll keep an open I don’t know so
you can see there’s just a little resistance was being dropped and all of a sudden I said
well the other people are praying maybe I’ll try kneeling down and saying a prayer hope
nobody’s looking I don’t anybody to see me I’m shutting the door don’t my family looking
in but I’ll just try this little thing and I don’t know I did it for a while and I started feeling
better I tried to tell myself it was a coincidence but I couldn’t and it kept growing inside
of me and so AA is just works a miracle on finessing us around being agnostic atheists
non-believers God haters whatever it is we’re just suggested just put that on hold keep
an open mind and see what happens and why don’t we just move along with the steps
now as soon as you start an open mind on spiritual matters you have come 90% of the
way that’s all it takes is just this little tiny open mind because before that it was closed
don’t want to hear it and all you’re being asked to do is well would you be willing to just
look around with an open okay I’ll look around with a no and that’s it it’s brilliant it’s
absolutely brilliant I started looking around with an open mind next thing I’m in the
middle of it and I said well did they brainwash me did they what did they do and in order
to explain this I like to go to the very end in the twelve and twelve in the twelfth step
and it has this wonderful description of this process and I’m paraphrasing but it says
something like they’re describing the spiritual awakening and there’s a sentence in there
it says we finally realized that we’ve had a spiritual awakening about which there’s no
doubt it’s just emphasizing I’ve really see the transformation that took place in me and
as we look back on the people behind us we know from experience and absolute
certainty that the man who still hasn’t got the spiritual angle and who still calls his home
group his higher power will presently come to know and love God and call him by name
and nobody told him to do it nobody said starting next Thursday you will stop using your
group as your higher power and it’ll be God nobody says a word about that but we know
that that process will happen because of our open mind what got the mind open let’s
never forget what got the mind open so you can’t take credit for it the bottom alcohol
opened our minds and made us stick up our hand with a white handkerchief in it I give
up I give up so that’s where the credit goes with the disease so anyway we start having
an open mind and you can see the open mind is a process of coming to believe that a
power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity if you’re sponsoring people who
are still having a problem with that you could take them back to the disease let’s take a
look and and they do it right in this chapter of the agnostic which is our second step and
Bill sets it up and I do every time I talk I always mention these lines he says if you when
you drink you can’t control the amount you drink okay that’s everybody and if when you
stop you can’t stay stopped okay that’s everybody then you’re probably an alcoholic
okay all right I’m in so now we’re all in right or I’ll end all in if that’s the case you’re
suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience can fix are you sure is that does
the American Medical Association agree with that I’m suffering from an illness that only a
spirit let me look in the directory of illnesses let’s see illnesses only spiritual experience
turns out there’s no other way to survive alcoholism somehow I’m gonna have to change
my mind and Bill knows right then when we told them about the disease that requires a
spiritual experience that we’re fighting this with tooth and nail I don’t want to be boxed
into a corner like that and the next sentence and you’ve all heard it to live on a spiritual
basis or to be doomed an alcoholic death are not easy alternatives to face door number
one die an alcoholic death door number two live on a spiritual basis which do you choose
and if you knew alcoholic you go I’m thinking I’m thinking it looks like two equally rotten
choices spiritual basis looks awful I saw some spiritual people they were having no fun
they were just I just don’t think that’s a good choice do I get a phone call yes you get a
phone call before you decide I call my doctor and I go how bad is an alcoholic death oh
god okay I’ll try the spiritual crap is not exciting how we get into so we use the disease
itself to keep the mind open to reconsider this power came to believe that a power
greater than ourselves the thing that helps us believe in this power is listening to other
people or watching someone who comes in and goes faster than we do I remember
doing that you know I came out of the I didn’t want anything to do with this God thing I
fought it for a year and a half two years and I’d see a guy who come behind me and I
remember looking at this one guy and I said if there’s anybody worse off than me it’s him
oddly money he will not make it it’s impossible for this guy look at him I mean it’s
impossible three months later he’s giving a talk and everyone’s listening and he sounds
wonderful and he’s talking about he’s glowing and he’s talking about God came into his
life and and I’m sitting back there going I don’t know I have no other way of explaining
this we got no other way of explaining it you’re stuck with the God thing I had there’s no
way to explain how that guy got from here to there in three months impossible and so
we what we have an AA is an endless supply of miracles we have a disproportionate
supply of miracles here in AA we probably have more miracles occur here than in any
other society on planet earth why because we collected all the low bottoms here and
they are the necessary ingredients so it’s not a fair sample we we got them all we went
in the jails the nut wars down on the street and all those places and that’s where we
gathered our society from we didn’t go on the upper echelons and get people who were
doing real well and since hitting bottom is the necessary step in having a spiritual
awakening that’s why our sample is so high that’s why we see it so often here and the
fact that you can see it helps with coming to believe well I didn’t really believe it until I
saw Harry I didn’t really believe it until I saw Mary and now I just go boy something is
happening here that’s why attendance at meetings is so big and speaker meetings also
where you can hear the full story and then you realize wow that girl went to the same
school I did and she hasn’t wow she has three kids so do I well she was worse off than I
was look at her she said I want to be like her and we have this program of attraction we
don’t know what it is but these people have something that we like and we want to be
like them and that is also pushing us towards coming to believe that a power greater
than ourselves could restore us to sanity so it’s a process but it isn’t something you go
home and think about it’s something when you come to a you experience now if you
kept a closed mind you could see 50 miracles and it wouldn’t make a dent you would just
write them all off now it’s a coincidence and she’s faking it she wasn’t that bad off and
I’ve seen it happen keep a closed mind if you want to go like this and prove that a a
doesn’t work you can do it it will not get in there nothing will get in there and you’ll be
able to proudly announce down at the bar I tried a a for a year and it didn’t work but you
really didn’t try it you went to the meetings but you knew ahead of time you weren’t
going to let it in you were just going to audit Alcoholics Anonymous and then you could
report back to your family I tried it I know you wanted me to go to you begged me to go
to a a I did it doesn’t work now get off my back and go back out to drinking so the open
mind is crucial and if you’re sponsoring somebody you got to stay on them in that first
step until they have an open mind do not leave the first step keep going back to
powerlessness take their nose rub it in there let me would you go over the nut ward
again one time would you would you review what it was like in there how long were you
in there oh I see okay okay until they go all right all right all right I can’t possibly manage
it and that’s the surrender at the in-depth it’s the only step we take a hundred percent
now boy if you’re sponsoring somebody you’ve got to get them so there’s no doubt in
their mind that they’re powerless over this stuff that it gives them the open mind and we
can come up against this wonderful second step and in the middle of that step the big
book is really good I use the both books the 12 and 12 in the big book and it’s really
good not just in the beginning there but as it moves on it quickly jumps to catapulted in
the fourth dimension of existence and the our Creator enters our hearts the absolute
certainty that our Creator has entered our hearts and lives in a way that is indeed
miraculous he is starting to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves and then comes
the wonderful question all of a sudden out of the blue it says you’re gonna have to deal
with this right now God is everything or he’s nothing he either is or he isn’t what’s your
choice isn’t that interesting what’s your choice this is a pretty crucial choice now prior to
coming here I chose God’s nothing and I got the results of that choice that’s what my
sponsor used to say to me he wanted to do a spiritual inventory I’ve been around a year
and a half he said let me just check your spiritual I just want to do it quick down and
dirty okay okay how much do you pray bill prayers a bunch of crap I don’t pray I don’t
even that the Lord’s Prayer at the meetings I go I just don’t believe in prayer prayers out
he said so prayer zero right okay how about do you go to church ever no churches I don’t
like I had a bad experience as a kid even when I’m in Europe I don’t go look at the Great
Cathedral screw them I don’t want anything to do with churches okay no churches how
about meditation meditation I got stuff to do I got all these kids we’re freaking starving
you want me to sit around going da da da da no I don’t have meditation is out okay out
out now do you ever read spiritual literature our libraries are filled with unbelievably
wonderful books they can uplift you I like mafia books I like sport books love books about
Hitler Hitler is my man I just love to read about him and see him in the movies the
answer is no so he goes no no no no okay one more question okay yeah how’s it going
what’s it feel like to be inside of you oh it’s awful in here too awful and then I shared how
awful it was and he said okay so that’s the result of no spirituality you’re a scientist you
claim that you like intellectual scientific things we just did an experiment you existed for
all these years with no spirituality you certainly are big enough person to conduct an
experiment and try some spirituality and see if you get different results right you’re in
charge of the results you could report back nothing happening but you gotta admit you
owe it to yourself to try some of this spiritual stuff and since I was in such horrible shape
I got suckered in to trying it I’m gonna try reading the st. Francis prayer good almighty
I’m gonna try thinking about the serendipity prayer I’m gonna try doing this and I’m
gonna maybe get the real big book out and look in there for a few comforting readings
and maybe I’ll just see I don’t think it’s going to work but I’m willing to give it a try and
boy what a change happens I was willing to do the action even though I didn’t believe in
it if anybody wanted to describe our steps to a new person they are 12 actions that we
don’t believe in and we’re going to do them anyway why because there’s nowhere else
to go there’s no alternative program you have a non-spiritual program out there where
people are celebrating big roundups no there’s a guy down the corner there claims he
stayed sober on his own well but he never has part no he just sits there by himself and
logs in his sobriety every year so there’s no alternative program no there’s no alternative
all right and that’s the noise if you’re a sponsor you love that noise that’s the noise of an
open-mind beginning all right okay all right we know someone’s about to do something
against their better judgment they’re actually going to follow the ideas of someone else
instead of their own and this is when you really start having wonderful things happen we
are stepping out of the way temporarily temporarily I remember that just temporarily I
will allow you to kind of run my life temporarily till I get the hang of it and then I’ll be
taking it back that was the arrangement that I had and so he said well then now we’re
going to deal with the third step of turning your life making a decision to turn your life
over to God as you understand him and there was tremendous resistance with this
what’s going to happen to me I already mentioned that Bill in the 12 and 12 I’ll be no one
I turn my life over my life’s being run by my sponsor my home group God whatever it is
where do I fit in what do I run you don’t run anything right now your job is to evaluate
the results that we’re getting running it for you that all right yeah every month we’re
going to come by and check on the results all right the end of two months how’s it going
better or worse well maybe better maybe maybe better maybe this much better actually
I’m so happy I can’t stand it but I don’t want to I don’t want to give him a big head he’s
never turn it back to me and so I’ve made a beginning as you can see by allowing my
sponsor to make a few directions in my life and then if I didn’t like them I could run it by
my home group my sponsor says I really don’t know he’s wrong right right oh he’s right
okay well I just want to run it by the whole group and I understand I understand and we
begin to get an introduction into something that is one of the most powerful things we
have in the program and that is being wrong oh boy is this is the best thing that can
happen is to be wrong now when you’re new doesn’t sound like good news does it well
hate to tell you Heidi but you’re wrong again right in front of the group wrong again and
it it feels bad I didn’t like being wrong my sponsor cornered me one day and he said
don’t you see it’s not what you say it’s this and I went oh yeah all right okay you’re right
he said no you’re wrong I said no it’s the same thing bill you’re right you’re right that’s it
no I’m gonna hear you say you’re wrong and I don’t know about you but the first time I
actually got those words out I’m wrong I felt like a earthquake had happened that I
actually admitted that I was wrong I don’t ever remember being wrong before ever at
least it wasn’t in my memory where I walked up to somebody and said you know
something I’m wrong and we get in here we find out this is the most free thing that can
happen it’s to get rid of a wrong idea an untruth there was an old guy up in DC it says it
isn’t the stuff you don’t know that’ll kill you it’s knowing things for sure that just ain’t so
and we know a lot of things for sure that just aren’t true but we think they are and we
live with those false truths inside of us the world isn’t fair I’m no good my parents who
gave me a rotten childhood I hate my sister I hate religions I hate the United States I
haven’t you just go on and on and on and this is wrong and that’s wrong and it’s all
inside of me and we got to understand Mona was talking at Yana today about this that
whatever we think up produces an emotion it produces a feeling when I tell myself that
those people over there don’t like me I really feel it it’s the same as if they really didn’t
like me it doesn’t matter how they feel if I say they don’t like me I suffer from it I’m going
boy I’m never going over to that side of the room I’m just gonna talk to these people cuz
they don’t like me you know what it feels like when you do that you don’t even want to
go near people you feel very inferior and it’s all because I thought that up and then had
the feeling and once you have the feeling it’s true they could come up and tell me no
actually we like us it’s too late I have the feeling you you can you can tell me whatever
you want but I already know I felt it it’s right here and I’m not going to go against my
feelings they’re in charge my feelings are where the truth is oh boy where did that come
from the truth comes from unlearning and we’ll get to that later on when we start doing
inventories and spirituality so we make a lot of progress in having an open mind about
turning our life over mainly because we’re being convinced that if we stay in charge it’s
going to be a disaster if you have a good sponsor they’ll keep pointing that out
remember what happened when you were in charge you remember who got you in the
nut ward who did this okay and so this is just the beginning of all right maybe I’ll try this
turning my life over but it doesn’t get turned over here we just make the decision in the
third step made a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of God so what it
involved was having another open mind that’s all I got to have to make a wonderful
beginning on AA’s third step is to have an open mind about the idea and may and just
and again for me it was hearing one speaker after another get up there and and I could
see him you know they can’t hide who they are they can’t hide their happiness they can’t
hide their enthusiasm and it would be right in front of my eyes to watch and I’d go man
this God things got some pretty good advertisers here I have to admit it that these
people are really demonstrating something that I didn’t think was possible so you see
where the open mind is coming from it’s coming from ourselves it’s coming from
watching other people and then finding out oh yeah she just lost her sister last week well
she’s still here helping people yeah that’s right well how she do that well she’s relying on
God I can’t believe it I just can’t believe it and we watch people go through get fired and
be helping other people find a job you know what’s that things that we never dreamed
were possible we see right in front of our eyes and that opens us more to the idea of
turning our life over to a loving higher power so now we got to get down to the nittygritty of how this is done we’re going to try make I can make a decision to turn my life
over but it is being held by my greasy little hands rather tightly you managed with the
help of a nut ward and several strong people to pry this one finger open and I gave up
drinking I totally surrendered the idea of drinking and now you want me to let go of
everything else letting go it doesn’t sound like a big action verb but it’s the main action
verb in all of Alcoholics Anonymous is letting go sounds like you just go and it’ll be all
done just go they don’t do that you can say and you still got a grip you still got a grip just
let go of your financial worries okay well yeah but but I gotta I got I got I just can’t let go
of it I gotta go I so okay well you won’t let go of that one okay and you can see there’s all
these so let go of your relationships oh no I got a control that will let go of your family I
can’t let go of that so we’re going to have to inventory where all the trouble is and we
are very good at inventory everybody who came to AEA is an expert at inventorying but
not themselves we keep very close track of people all around us and the news and the
world and all that we inventory boy we inventory all night sometimes we can’t even
sleep because we’re still inventorying one more damn thing they did I forgot about that
so we’ve got a list a mile long of the amends that are owed to us and our sponsor says
I’m going to teach you a new spiritual principle all of your problems were created by you
there’s none of them that came from outside they all were created by you and you go
wow that’s horrible news no it’s good news that means that all of your problems can be
removed without anybody else changing that’s pretty good news isn’t it if it wasn’t all
caused by me I would need many many people to change before I could be happy and
before these problems were gone so it sounds like it’s bad news but it’s wonderful news
all of my problems were caused by me why would I cause problems for myself because
we have a thing called character defects they come from our ego and they come from
the desire for sex security and a place in society and these instinctual drives are
absolutely necessary to survive as human beings we need them to form societies to
reproduce and to feed ourselves and to achieve some sort of security so they’re
absolutely necessary the problem is in self-centered alcoholics self-centered in the
extreme the instinctual drives have become the controlling force and they are in charge
of our lives and we have mistakenly fell for the idea that the only way to be happy is to
meet these demands if I feel insecure about money I got to get more money if I feel
insecure about sex I got to get more sex if I feel insecure about not being an important
person I have to be the president of the company because once I get there then this stuff
will stop talk to people amongst us who have really succeeded and ask them if that stuff
went away and it didn’t talk to people who ended up with two or three million dollars did
you go to bed every night with being financially secure no I was worried that the market
would take it all away I never did talk to the handsomest guy there he’s got all these
girlfriends you feel more secure about your sexuality no I’m afraid when I’m gonna run
away well god damn this supply stuff this supply stuff doesn’t seem to be working you no
matter how much you accumulate it doesn’t fix the problem does it no because we
cannot accumulate enough to keep up with the demands that we can keep creating
that’s how powerful these instinctual drives are and so we have to abandon that formula
and come up with the spiritual answer which is to reduce the demand so they don’t
bother us and I went are you sure my sponsor I remember the first time he told me that
he said we can achieve financial security for you without any more money showing up
and I went well technically that might be true but I think it would be better if the money
showed up rather than feeling safe in God’s arms with the zero bank account I
understood it was technically possible but the money idea sounded better but then I
started realizing you really could be comfortable that day in this present moment with
everything just the way it is I spent my entire life about to be happy I was this close a
couple times I was actually I was actually almost ready to admit you know I am happy
but it occurred to me that I wasn’t totally happy because I could think of something else
if I had I’d be even happier and so it started in grammar school boy once I get out of
grammar school I’m gonna be really happy I see those kids in high school they’re really
happy this freaking high school sucks I guess once you got a high school you get into
college then you’re really gonna be happy look at those college kids and then you get in
college boy this college doesn’t work at all well I guess when you get married that’s it
when you get married you get married you Jesus that was better when I was single what
the hell’s going on well I think if I had some kids if I had some kids one two three four
five six happy are you kidding who the hell said that six good Jesus well then what is
gonna make me well I’ll go fly jets and I’ll be overseas and I’ll be just oh boy it’ll be the
most wonderful thing in the world and even that eventually wouldn’t work and we found
that there was no way to pursue happiness it just was never gonna you’re never gonna
get there you know why you can’t get there because you already are there we never
stopped to take it look and see if we weren’t really happy right now let’s really take an
inventory let’s really look and I would come to my sponsor and I’d go bill bill the sky’s
falling out the sky was always falling guess what’s gonna happen a lot of the colonel
looked at me funny in the early morning you know and he’d go okay yeah I hear that I
heard that but look you got six months now you’re the treasure of the group and you’re
gonna speak Saturday night over at Annandale and people really like it they really think
you’re funny and they really enjoy it a lot of people been telling me that you’re really
quite a nice guy really really really I think things are probably pretty good and I would
say well if you look at it that way maybe it is pretty good so I had just concluded it was
terrible and I had a short conversation and suddenly it’s really pretty good I was wrong
he was right it is pretty good but I need help seeing it I need help seeing it that’s what I
need we need each other to help see what’s really happening to see how wonderful AA is
to see how wonderful it is to see a new person sober up and so we boy my voice is just
running out in time so we have this wonderful four-step inventory and I’m not in a
meeting like this we’re not going to get the big book out and go through all the columns
of how to inventory the sex security and society and the fears and the resentments and
sex if you when you get to this if you’re new be sure to use both books and start with the
12 and 12 this is my own tape because the 12 and 12 explains where all these defects
come from that they come from these instinctual drive and these instinctual drives were
God-given you did not create lust out of your being rotten this just shows up for
everyone these things they’re just part of being a human being so you can’t even take
credit for these things those of us that were guilty oh my god in there and as Bill says
the guilty ones they don’t want to look and the prideful ones don’t have any character
defects so they don’t have to look and that’s why we need a sponsor to help us see what
is it that is causing us to be in pain all the time this is not an inventory about harm to
other people yet this is an inventory of why am I so unhappy all the time what is wrong
with me well we’re going to get it all on paper because later on we’re going to take all of
this we’re going to run it by someone else to verify to see the third dimension of it then
we’re going to take the whole package to God and if we can get willing enough he’s
going to start lifting this stuff out it’s a very effortless problem all that’s required is
letting go and it may take the rest of your life to let go because we just don’t want to let
go that much and I will get to that when we get to step six and we’ll find out what the
real problem is in letting go so we’ve gotten all up through taking a searching and
fearless moral inventory of ourselves we haven’t taken it we’re not going to do that
tonight we’re just trying to see the big picture in terms of ending self-centeredness and
I’ll just close with this that when you tell a self-centered person that self-centeredness is
their problem and they finally see it their first reaction is I’m gonna do something about
that that’s their first reaction you’re right I am self-centered I think I’ll just fix that okay
how how how are you going to not be self-centered well I’ll just become unself-centered I
see but what is that exactly well I’ll I’ll think of other people once in a while yes selfishly
you’ll probably go you know what I’m gonna mow his lawn he might loan me his car it’s
impossible for us to do anything from a self-centered position that doesn’t have bad
motives it just can’t happen Bill writes we learn how to we don’t know what kindness is
but we understand that kind people seem to get ahead so we go what is kind well like if
you offered to open the door for somebody that’s kind yeah and it’ll get you ahead yeah
if you’re opening the door in order to get ahead it’s not kind it’s acting like you’re kind I
want people to think I’m kind hi hi you think I’m kind yet good do I get something we
don’t know that being kind it’s its own reward so we’re going to find all those things out
as we move along and oh I didn’t finish the answer to how to become unself-centered is
to become God-centered the only way out there’s no other freedom from that and the
painful price of doing that is called humility and we have a whole step about that and
we’ll get there I thank everybody for their attention guy thanks for inviting me over and
that’s it
Track 2 – Steps 5 – 8
Track 3 – Steps 9 – 12
The Recovery Speakers team is able to share and continue this work solely through donations from our users and supporters. Please consider a donation.
