Topic: Step 1 - Astrid H (NSFW)

hello and welcome to sober cast where we provide a speak meetings and workshops in podcast format we're an ad-free podcast and if you enjoy listening please help us be self-supporting by visiting sobercast.com look for the donate link and drop a dollar or two into our virtual basket we hope you enjoyed the podcast have a great day hi i'm astrid and i'm an alcoholic thank you for that introduction jenny and thank you for everyone that puts this on thank you lee thank you polly and everybody in here it takes a lot of people to put on something like this and i get it you know it's a lot of work and um and it's an honor and it's a privilege to be able to speak on step one in atlanta you know there's a lot of people that put a dollar in a basket that paid for an airplane ticket and then a hotel room and i don't take that for granted. You know, many years ago, nobody would have flown me anywhere, but maybe a one-way ticket to San Quentin or something. So it's an honor. And I really hope that I can say something that'll help somebody tonight. When I look at step one, I see that I'm powerless over alcohol. And then there's that dash that my life is unmanageable. And I had to really dig very, very deeply inside of my own self. I had to do a lot of self-reflecting of when did the unmanageability start? How did my life get unmanageable? Where does this disease center? You know, what is unmanageability? Because if I don't have step one down as a way of life and I'm not armed with the facts, then for me personally, I don't feel that there's any real point in even going into step two because it's not a homework assignment. It's an experiential program. so for me I look all the way back into my childhood and like so many people here we come from a lot of trauma and I believe that for most of us untreated alcoholism started before the bottle came into our lives and I know for me there was a tremendous amount of conflict with between my parents there was a lot of screaming there was a lot of yelling I never felt heard there was a tremendous amount of sibling rivalry and why is this important because I don't feel that I had the phenomenon of craving and the allergy when I was three years old or five years old. I can remember like having a sip of my mother's beer, you know, or a sip of wine and I didn't go to kindergarten drunk the next day. So something happened later on. I crossed over an invisible line later on. But a character was being formed. And what was happening is coping skills were being downloaded and resentments were piling up and frustration was happening in my life. And a character that was being built that was eventually headed for a drink or headed for, you know, this is Alcoholics Anonymous and I never want to water down the message, but we can take that beginning, first half of step one. I'm powerless over whatever. People use all kinds of poisons to quiet their mind or to detour from the present moment because they just can't handle life on God's terms or life on life's terms. It's just too hard. So maybe it's pills, maybe it's cutting, maybe it's chocolate cake, maybe it's porn, shopping, alcohol, drugs, etc. But the dash that my life is unmanageable is what I really wanted to look at. And so I could see that at a really early age I had a tremendous amount of frustration. And there was a lot of hitting and a lot of spanking in my household. So I learned to be violent. I believe that most violent people had violence inflicted upon them. I mean, I could still just, you know, I think about like taking somebody out or knocking their teeth out. The first thought comes, and then the second thought has to be a power greater than myself downloads. But, you know, I'm a character, and I'm a fully built, untreated character without this program. And I'm the same woman drunk as I am sober if I don't get a program of recovery. I can sit around here in AA for weeks, months, and years and have no transformation and be so dry I could spontaneously combust or blow a hole in the ceiling here. and that's hopefully not what's going to happen. So as time goes on, I'm three, I'm four, I'm five, I'm seven, I'm ten years old, and I can see even in kindergarten looking back, there was just trouble. You know, first grade, second grade, you know, she's got behavioral problems or I can't sit still, I'm always picking my nails, I'm afraid, I'm in fear. I can see that there's neurosis downloading. My mother's a German war survivor, and she's very conscious about wasting food or electricity or wasting anything for that matter. You wear the socks until they fall off, until there's holes in them. That's just the way we do it. All the leftovers need to be eaten. We don't throw things away. And I can remember, even as a really young child, she could hear me open the refrigerator, and God forbid you're not allowed to stand in the refrigerator and look for food. You're just not. And I'd hear her, God damn it, close the refrigerator. And I can remember at a really early age laying in bed and thinking, what if the refrigerator's open and we're wasting electricity what if all the food's going bad you see her pathology transferred into mine at a really early age did she mean to do that no but I could I was laying in bed and I would think oh my god what if the refrigerator's open and I'd go running through the living room and into the kitchen and I'd push on the refrigerator door and it wouldn't be open and I'd go back in bed and then three minutes later my head would say you might not have pushed hard enough. Maybe the refrigerator is open. You know what? It took me a long time to even fish that out of my pile of whatever because that is so poignant even in my life today. You see, I do the same thing over and over expecting different results. The insanity of the untreated alcoholism was already downloading and I was going to look for a solution later on in life. And I don't want to take this lightly. I can't compartmentalize the disease. I didn't just show up and at 13 I opened a Budweiser and poof, like Glenda the Good Witch with a bubble, you know, I turn into an alcoholic. It doesn't go like that. There's a whole lot of things along the path that begin to form the character that's going to wind up pounding liquor, throwing their life away, pissing their pants, cussing everybody out and not caring about their life and having no self-worth or self-respect. So as time goes on, I mean, you talk about self-respect. There wasn't encouragement in my household. It was like, you stupid or you fool or how could you do that? And so I remember always feeling very small and very ugly and very stupid. I didn't know that I was even intelligent or I had any kind of IQ, anything until way later on in life. Just none of that was there. And again, I'm not blaming my parents, but I can see that this character was being formed. And so somewhere around 12 years old, I go to a party and somebody opens a Budweiser and hands it to me. And alcohol does for me what I cannot do for myself. And I have a temporary shift, a psychic change. I feel okay. I actually really like it. I even like the taste. I like the way it makes me feel. I have better eye contact. I can breathe. Hey, everybody's cool. This is good. We're cool. Right on. Yeah, what sign are you? I don't know, but you know, this is good. and I go home and I think to myself that was the funnest night I ever had why? because self was temporarily knocked out self was temporarily knocked out of the picture I loosened you know and spirit downloaded and I was able to be and do and think and feel in a way that I couldn't before I had a psychic change I had a psychic shift but what happens for so many of us is We continue along the path, and we keep pouring liquor down and pouring liquor down and using it on the weekends. And the next thing you know, it's four days a week and then five days a week, and then it's afternoon and evenings, and then it's morning, noon, night. And they call it an invisible line because it's an invisible line. But at some point, I cross over the invisible line, and I lose the freedom of choice. And now I'm drinking in high school, day and night, around the clock, mildly buzzed and mildly drunk. And the character that I just told you about that was fully built gets to stay very stunted for probably the rest of my life. Right into my teens, right into my 20s, right into my 30s. I don't really mature. I don't really evolve. I'm not a good problem solver. I don't know how to back down. I don't know how to say I'm sorry. I don't know how to properly compromise. I don't have compassion for people. I hate you. I don't even know why I hate you. You didn't invite me to your party. I hope your whole house burns down. And it's so ugly and so dark inside. It's so heavy and it's so deep. And it goes on forever. And maybe 15 years later, I see you somewhere and I think, I hate you. I don't even know why because I can't even remember the party, but I just hate you. And all of that really underneath is just fear. Fear of not being loved. Fear of not being accepted. So it's some kind of brick wall that I begin to build around myself with my twisted warped ego. And I realized that very early on, maybe just maybe every single thought that surfs the waves of my brain is actually infected with untreated alcoholism. So as time goes on, you know, I just keep looking out there and thinking, you know, if I can get the guy or I get the, when I get to college, you know, or when I get out of this town, when I get away from my parents, when I finally get a car, and of course, it never, the when I get the thing never, everything just fails and fails and fails miserably. And I have, like the 12 and 12 says, I have the total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. I have no idea how to be in a long-term relationship, how to be a good friend, how to be loyal, how to show up for somebody. It's all about me. Where's mine? You don't know what I've been through. I'm a flippin' victim, and everybody's treated me like shit. And that can go on for the rest of my life, you know? Forever and ever and ever. I don't need liquor to ignite that crap. I don't. Just one thought, one trigger from the past, and poof, I can just be there like pouring Miracle-Gro on my character. So as time goes on, like so many people here, you know, AA has been such a revolving door for me. You know, I've been in and out and in and out and in and out so many times. And I'm not blaming AA, but I can tell you my own experience is I didn't know what I hear the message. I didn't hear the message that is being presented. I didn't hear the true AA message. And I think sometimes in AA, things seem to get watered down. And there's a tremendous amount of drunk-alogue and drama and people's problems. You know, they call it a dump and jump or a drive-by, you know. And I learned in my home group, and you know what, y'all can do whatever you want, but in my home group, they say, obviously, you cannot transmit something you haven't got. If you don't have it, don't get up there. Go stand in the parking lot and call your sponsor. Do something else. But I would hope that I could bring a message of depth and weight to the podium or ask a question or share some experience, strength, and hope. And unfortunately, we see in Alcoholics Anonymous that's not always the case. People just go on and on and on about their drama du jour, you know, and then you try to give them some kind of solution and they just walk the other way. And it's unfortunate because AA is also very loosely tied, so we can give people suggestions, but you can tell an alcoholic, but you can't tell him much. So often it falls on deaf ears. At any rate, you know, the first time I got sober, I was 27 years old, 28 years old, and I had a baby right away, and I went through the steps like a homework assignment because I didn't realize it was transformational, you know. It was almost like a race. The people that I was in rehab with, what step are you on? I'm on four. I'm on eight. Ha ha. You know, like you're one-upping on somebody. It doesn go like that It all experiential I not practicing the steps in my life I practicing the principles in all of my affairs There a very big difference I'm not practicing a step. I'm speaking about a step, and I'm speaking about my experience on a step, but I'm not practicing a step. I'm practicing the principles, and I'm sharing about the principles that I experienced in step one, which that second half of really watching my untreated alcoholism and the mental illness of alcoholism and seeing it for what it is so that I know what I'm even bringing to the table in step two. And that's what's so valuable. And I think that it's just not talked about enough in here. So anyway, I get into AA, you know, and I have a baby, and I, you know, I get a career, and I go to college, and I buy a house, and I get all that outside stuff, that I'm still so, like they say in the book, restless, irritable, and discontent. I just, man, I wake up in a panic attack every single day, every day. And, you know, what my sponsor had me do and what I do with women that I work with is I ask them to write down their most repetitive thoughts. And I'm going to tell you all right now what the number one most repetitive thought in the AA circle is for men and women. The thought is I'm not going to make it. And I don't even know where the hell we're supposed to make it to. Is there a paparazzi and a red carpet out there? But I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it through. I'm not going to get the thing. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'm not going to. And there's such a horrible urgency underneath it that it creates character defects. So I have to see that I was untreated all those 10 years of dry sobriety. I'd go to AA meetings. I'd get a sponsor. I wouldn't have a sponsor. I'd be in the steps. I'd be out of the steps. but I didn't check myself before I wrecked myself. I didn't know how to take my temperature. I didn't know how to see my untreated alcoholism. I had no capacity to self-reflect. I don't know what that is, self-reflect. I can see you, you dumb B-I-T-C-H, and you look stupid to me. And that's about it. I'm going to tell her because she needs to know. She's freaking dumb. She's an idiot, okay? And everywhere I go, I just poop in my nest, you know? And then I wonder when Christmas comes along, why I don't get invited to anything. I get a Christmas card from the dentist telling me I'm due for a teeth cleaning in January. And that's like, that's it. There's nothing else for me. And I think, you know, everybody's just an asshole. They don't get me. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. So as time goes on, we get worse, never better. And I go deeper and deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. And you know what's coming. The book says that if I don't have a psychic change, alcohol waits at every woman and man's elbow to resume its destruction. Some people say it does push-ups in the corner. It waits so patiently. But my solution was always alcohol. It wasn't shopping. It wasn't cutting. It wasn't porn. It wasn't chocolate cake. So in the end, if the problems pile up, guess what I'm always going to go back to? I'm always going to go back to the dang liquor. even though I can't even imagine it in my BB brain little mind oh I'll never drink again I know they never say never but you know what I'm going to say never I ain't never going to drink again oh oh oh oh no oh oh oh you know and it's really funny because Bill Wilson says in the big book he's such an asshole sometimes Bill the way he describes men in their relapse out comes his carpet slippers and then he tears the women apart and she just looked like a fucking sea hag within six weeks, you know, right? It's so mean. It's so mean, Bill. It's so mean. I didn't get no carpet slippers, you know. He's right. I mean, I was unrecognizable in no time. I would say I picked up a drink, and within six months, everything was just spiraling, spiraling, spiraling. Couldn't go to work. Couldn't function. In case you guys didn't know, the American Medical Association is now deemed, certified, that alcohol is actually a depressant. Duh! You know? So how many of us go to therapy over and over again and say, I just want to kill myself. And then the therapist says, how much do you drink? And not much, maybe a glass of wine a night, you know? And then the therapist puts us on meds or puts them on meds or you on meds. And now you've got this cocktail of insanity going with blackouts and bruises everywhere and you're, I don't even know what, having sex with a neighbor and God knows what. You know? And if we just were, like the damn book says, like the book says, okay? Tell him how baffled you are, how you finally learned that you were sick. Give her an account of the struggles you made to stop. Show her the mental twists which lead to the first drinking spree. Continue to speak of alcoholism as an illness, as a fatal malady. Talk about the conditions of the body and mind which accompany it. Keep her attention focused mainly on your personal experience. The book tells me right here in working with others, if I'm not armed with the facts, then what the heck am I even doing up here? What am I dishing out? Another drama du jour story? Want to hear that I peed on the Christmas tree and I don't know what, you know, flushed a wedding ring down the drain or whatever. You know, what we've heard at all, you know? So anyway, getting back to the whole story, as time goes on, I pick up a drink, and I just start blowing my life up. And I'm depressed all the time, and I'm waking up with a hangover, and I can't function. I can't get out of bed. I'm tired. I need a nap all the time. And it fries your parasympathetic nervous system. It fries the fight-or-flight aspect of your nervous system. And all of a sudden, you know, my daughter just wants, like, I don't know what, a piece of toast. What? I say, I don't know. Not now. You know, it's like the punishment isn't fitting the crime. And I know that I'm being crazy. I know that I'm being manic and crazy and angry, and I still can't stop it. Just because I can see my untreated alcoholism, it doesn't mean I can do anything about it. Big deal. And I see so many people that even come up to the podium, and like I said, they do a dump and jump. Oh, my mind, and it's doing this, and it's doing that. But if the solution isn't there, then what am I going to do? Just continue to energize my problem and energize my problem and energize my problem. So not only do I want to self-reflect and see who I was and who I still am today, but I want to know that this is what I'm going to be offering in step two. And I understand that step two is not what I'm speaking about, but I want to blow the hell out of step one so that we don't forget what the heck we're even doing in two or three or four, because there's no point in doing a moral inventory if I don't even know where the heck I was off, if I don't even know where I was hitting the mark and where I wasn't. So I start screaming at my daughter, and I'm yelling at everybody, and I'm cussing out the bank teller and whoever will listen to me, and I'm just like, God, I hate this. You know, I make a lot of noises like, oh, God, oh, oh, oh, oh, chief. Oh, God, did you see that? What is that? What is that? And when I really reflect and I look at what those noises are doing inside of me, my whole nervous system is just fried at that point. I'm like toxifying the line in Trader Joe's or at the bank or wherever. Look at this clown up here. I start calling people names. Not cool. Not cool. And you know, not cool for others, but I got to tell you, I got to keep the oxygen mask on myself. First and foremost, it's just not cool for me. It just doesn't feel good to be a crazy, uncontrollable bitch. It just doesn't. And all of us have that inside of us. I know. You wouldn't be sitting in this chair in Atlanta, Georgia, in the middle of a freaking lightning storm on a Friday night if something didn't go terribly wrong with your life. Right? I want to be somewhere else. Where's my husband and eight kids and 13 grandkids and my big fucking swing set and my raspberry bushes? You know, that's not happening. I need this in order to stay alive. Like, this is no joke. This is the hospital, and it will be for me for the rest of my life. Because like Jenny said, alcoholism, it's a subtle foe. You know what? I have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. The thing's always waiting. So in that second relapse, when I relapsed real hard, it got so bad, and I added a lot of drugs to it. And once again, I'm not here to water down AA, but I have some news for y'all. The landscape of AA has changed. And there are very few real alcoholic kids anymore. Nobody's sitting outside of the liquor store asking you to buy them a 30 or in a six-pack with a fake ID. they're snorting cold medicine and stuff you know they're on cocktails of psych meds and meth and you know powders and pills and needles and all of this stuff and why is that important to me it's important to me as a as a sober member of alcoholics anonymous because i choose this is my choice i choose to call that untreated alcoholism i choose to call it that and i choose to be somebody that's waiting at the door, and I don't really give a crap about what poison you put in your system. You can't function in your life, and you need the freaking steps. That's what you really need. I know what you need. Yeah. I'm not here to shut the door on people. I'm not here to like pick and choose alcoholic, alcoholic, addict. No, I don't know. You know, looky-loo. It's not my job. That's not my job. You know, it's, it's the person who walks in here is their job to, to want to be a sober member of Alcoholics in the Mountain. The only desire, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. In the end, it'll be the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop thinking because our mind is what's really killing us. The liquor is but a symptom. So as, as things begin to really unravel, I, I just can't function and I've got these crazy people in my life and I've got this psychotic boyfriend and we're just doing drugs and drinking and vodka and my 11 year old daughter is watching this whole thing just go down and she's in shock and you know it's really really really tragic to drag a child through the wake of untreated alcoholism I never thought that I would do that and when I was in the disease I can remember I almost didn't care I just couldn't I was so sick and I was so crazy and I was so out of it I couldn't care enough. It's not that I'm a psychopath or a sociopath because most alcoholics are very thin-skinned and very sensitive. We're not sociopathic. We're not completely disassociated, but I just can't look. I can't look at the damage that I'm doing right now because I'm so sick and I can't get out of my terrible cycle and I'm doing the best I can. I just slap some peanut butter on a piece of bread and I get you to school late and this is all you're going to get. What? Just don't bother me. I don't know, you know. So these people do an intervention. They come to my house, and they ask if they can take my daughter, and I give away my child. Eleven years old, I give my kid away. I gave my kid away. By the way, you guys, hey, guess what? I gave my kid away. Did everybody hear that? I gave my child. I chose liquor. I chose liquor over my child. Do you know why? Because the three primary instincts, my instinct for sex, my instinct for security, and my instinct for approval, that far exceed their intended purpose, those instincts wildly and blindly drive me. And you know what? Once that instinct is twisted and warped, all of my intellectual knowing that I should care for my daughter isn't enough. Alcohol is way stronger than anything to care for a child or to care for another person. The alcoholism trumps over everything, and there's only one power that's bigger than all of that. And that power was nowhere to be seen because I wasn inviting that power into my life as a way of life I wasn done yet I going to burn this shit down We taking it all down Here we go So I give my child away and eventually I just move out into the street. And I mean at like 43 years of age, I'm a prostitute in the street. You know, I'm smoking crack, drinking vodka, out of my mind, in and out of jail. I have 23 prostitution cases, 18 drug and alcohol related cases. Out of my mind. Total psychosis. I can't differentiate the true from the false. I don't know what's real and what's not. And remember, all that twisted person is still in me from before because I never transformed. So now I'm just really cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Like people see me coming and they're just like, oh God, I know my family. I believe that they prayed that I would just die. They just didn't want to see me darken their doorstep again. and they didn't know what to do with my daughter. No one knew what to do with me. It was so painful for all the people around me. I blew up their lives. And that's another thing about untreated alcoholism, that we're so victim-y when we're in our disease that it's really hard for us to take into consideration what we've done to the people around us. I couldn't, for years in recovery, I couldn't really, really, really get to that place. I've done amends with my mom over and over, but that real genuine place where it's like, man I am so sorry you lost so much sleep I'm really sorry that I put you through hell I'm really sorry that you would see a homeless woman in the street and you'd slow way down you look just for a minute just for a minute moves at her it might be her or the phone would ring by mistake at three in the morning and you'd just be so sure that it's your daughter I can't even wrap my mind around that until way later in recovery that did not come easy for me because I'm a victim and I'm going to hold on to my story and I'm I got a big ego and I'm large and I'm in charge and it just just because I do the homework of the steps it doesn't mean that I really get the whole kit and caboodle it doesn't mean that that that poof you know it's all gone that's one of the biggest myths in Alcoholics Anonymous is you know it's really sad because every once in a while you see someone that's super honest and they'll come up to the podium and they'll be weepy and they'll say, you know what, I did my fifth step with my sponsor yesterday, and I just still feel like shit. And I'm like, you know what, man, that girl needs some love. Please don't tell her she didn't do it right. You know what, all of those wounds are in us at a cellular level. You don't just write it on a piece of paper and poof, it's gone. It's in my bones. It's literally in my bones to the point where you can see organ transplants. You can see, God, there's one really good story. I love looking those on YouTube. There's one lady who never rode a motorcycle and never drank beer and she got a biker who got killed in an accident and she got his liver and even in the hospital she's like, God, I want beer. She kept thinking, I want beer. He died drunk as a skunk and I just find it so fascinating and the reason why is because his memory was in at a cellular level. It wasn't in his head. It was in the whole being. It was in the bones. It was in the structure. His ether was in there. And so I take a look at that. And just because I write out a fourth and a fifth step and look at my grudge list and look at how it affected my sex relation, personal relation, pocketbook, blah, blah, blah. And my, my, you know, my part in it, it doesn't mean it's gone. Hopefully it means that I have another aha experience and I feel a little bit sick and I'm like, wow, you know, one more time I did this to somebody. One more time I blame people, but God's the one that lifts everything in the end, you know, and sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. The most important factor is that I continue to show up and even be transparent. And so I love when people tell me, they'll even tell me that they did an amends and they weren't really ready to do the amends. And secretly, guess what? They still hope she'd get hit by a Mack truck. And you know what? Right on for her. Right on. I get it. And I get it too. You know what? I get it. Because if I try to spray perfume and embellish this thing and make it like this perfect formula and everything's going to be crystallized in gold, it's not fair to people who do stumble and fall and trip all over the place. It's not a perfectly clean formula. It's a program of action and it's a program of living. But let me tell you, we're alcoholics. We weevil and wobble all over the place, and that's okay. You know what? It's that the willingness is there to continue on the path. So as time goes on, I wind up in the streets, you know, prostitution, crazy out of my mind. When you get into that place, it's very primal. It's so, it's kill or be killed, you know. You just, like, look at people like, what do you want from me, you know. What the heck do you want? You sort of feel the vibe of somebody. There's really almost no thinking going on anymore. and just worse and worse and worse. You know, I remember one time it was pouring rain and there was this house that had been burned down and a lot of people drank in there and slept in there and smoked out in there. And I went in there, it was pouring rain, the rain was falling through the ceiling and that burnt smell of a burnt house. But parts of the house weren't burnt. And there was this gal laying on a sleeping bag, this black girl, and she was so high and she was pregnant, like out to here. And I remember the first thought was like, oh, God, oh, man, this is a tough one. I got a kid out there. I mean, I gave birth naturally. I breastfed for three years. And I just shut my mouth because she gave me that look like, don't even, don't even ask me. Don't even come near, you know. So I just sat down, and we were getting high. And after a while, she took my hand and put it on her stomach, and I could just feel this baby moving and moving and moving. And you know what? The good part of me would have called 911, would have called somebody, would have done something. But you know what? Like I said, the disease is stronger than self-will. It's stronger than those instincts. I couldn't get out of there. I couldn't say no. I couldn't stop it. I just sit by like a prisoner watching something like this. And I'm sure everybody has a story like that. There's so much pain in this room. It's not even funny to arrive here at Alcoholics Anonymous and to be willing to do what they're asking of us. It takes a tremendous amount of humility. It takes so many beatings, not just one beating. Every bottom has a trap door and then boom again and lower and lower. I mean, some people go to jail once or twice. I mean, once you know every deputy in LA County jail, like that's really bad. It's just not good. You know, you've been on every floor. It's just not good, you know, not good at all. So anyway, you know, it's things like that. I remember one time this trick picked me up in the street and I got in his car and he just pulls a gun out like at me. And he just goes, take your fucking clothes off and you're going to suck my dick. And I'm like, you know what? You need to slow down, Turbo. Hold on. And he starts like trying to pistol whip me. And I just looked right at him. And I'm not kidding. I said, you know what? I'm not taking my clothes off and I'm not doing anything. What I want you to do is I want you to look in my eyes and I'm going to count to three. And when I say three, blow my freaking brains out. And he goes, girl, you're fucking crazy. Get the hell out of here. But you know what? I meant it. Like I meant it. You're not, you're not, we're not doing silence of the lamb and I'm not getting down in a hole and it's the lotion in the whole nine yards. Like, let's get this over with now. I don't want to last three or four more hours or days. And that's what happens at the bottom of the disease, like something shifts at such a low primal level that I didn't have the balls to kill myself, but I'm just ready. I'm ready for anything. Like you think oblivion is the solution, really. It's so low and it's so lonely down there. And I can see that there are no bridges back to safety. I mean, I can remember trying to remember my social security number. It had been so long since I'd been in a house even. I hadn't driven a car in years. How am I ever, my child's now reached puberty, you know, she's going into high school. How am I ever gonna ever, ever, ever, ever get back to, there's not, it's not possible. So the police start stinging the streets and cleaning things up and cleaning things up and every time I go in front of the judge, he says, Miss Howe, don't you want Prop 36? And I'm like, death before detox, I'm not going down, you know. And over and over, they just release me back into the street again and again and again. But at some point, I make a decision. You know what? Okay, I'm going to go into rehab. And I go into rehab after rehab after rehab after rehab. And every time I get sober for half a minute, you know what kills me? What I did to my child. It kills me. It kills me like the healthy heart part of a mother. It kills me like the mother bear that always lived in my basement that would do anything to protect my child. It kills me because how do I even face her with all this prostitution and stuff? She's a virgin. She's a teenager. She's pure. How am I ever going to, oh, my God, and I can't take it. And then I get these tapes by this guy named Bob Anderson who started this meeting in Los Angeles. It's called Primetime. My home group isn't the be-all, end-all. You know what? Yale or jail, whatever. Betty Ford, back of a Ford. You know, the whole nine yards. God will download anywhere. God comes in all over the place. You know, all my sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors, sponsors. None of that matters. Really, it's experiential. And sometimes grace comes and sometimes grace doesn't. But a lot depends on my willingness to suit up and to show up. So I hear this message from this guy, and it just blows my mind because it's the first time ever that I heard somebody say the main part of the illness actually centers in the alcoholic's mind rather than her body. That alcoholism isn't in the liquid. It's not in the liquid. It's in my head. It's in my mind. And I'm like, jeepers, creepers. You know, the delusion that I'm like other people has to be smashed. You know, in the doctor's opinion it says, what does it say, doctor, in your opinion? What do you say? Let's see. Let's see. Somewhere in here. You know what? Here it is. We who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as her mind. Oh. Did he just say that? What did he say? That the body is quite as abnormal as her mind. Okay, great. Then I'm full flight from reality and I'm an outright mental defect. Oh my God, my ego can't hear that shit. Uh-uh. Not me. Oh no. And you know what? My heart mind is what is blocked. It's not my intellect. It's my heart mind. I shut my heart mind off so long ago. My emotional intelligence. You're not getting in. I'm not letting anybody in. You don't know how much pain I've been in. And, you know, Bill Wilson so eloquently says in Step 8 in the 12 and 12, he says, very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emotional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness. At the time of these occurrences, they may actually have given our emotions violent twists which have since discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worst. so very deep emotional conflict persists below the level of consciousness below the level of consciousness means I can't even remember my wounds I can't even remember him I'm just so hurt I don't have character defects I'm a defective character and the sooner I get to a place where I cannot admit but actually accept that that's a possibility that maybe just maybe just maybe I don't know anything I don't know anything about anything I don't know anything about anything about anything about anything About AA about God about parenting about forgiveness about getting a family back together about getting a new car about being a productive member of society about hanging out in a rehab for six months to a year to get my shit straightened out. Maybe I don't know anything. Maybe I don't know anything. And in the I don't know anything place is a huge surrender where the ego can't stand it. She's not going down without a fight. Oh, she hates it. please, please don't pour water on me like the Wicked Witch of the West. I'm melting. And I'm just like, you know what? That part of my mind needs to go because I've got to have a new experience. I need to set aside everything I think I know or I'll never get to step two. I'll never get there. I'll just be stuck like the untreated bandito in the second half of step one with the unmanageable thought life. I don't want that. So the main part of the illness centers in my mind. I'm bodily and mentally different from my fellows and I need to see that self has been running the show forever. And the prince says, the selfishness and the self-centeredness we think is the root of our trouble. So once again, I'm going to go inwardly and it doesn't matter who raped me, who mugged me, who cut me out of their will. You know what? Everybody in here has been treated very, very, very unfairly at some point. We have. Everybody's got a gnarly story of maybe like awful atrocities but that's not what we're looking at right now. We can look at that later too. By the way, when I help somebody through a fourth and a fifth step, I don't like this idea that Uncle Joe raped you your whole life and you're going to go up and say you're sorry for him for holding a resentment. Like there's some weird ass ideas in AA. That one has got to go. Because I actually personally believe that the real freedom comes at some point when you are really healthy with God and you let Uncle Joe know, do you have any idea how this affected my life? But that's not AA and that's further along the pike. And like I said, these wounds are in us at a cellular level. And if at some point I don't take a stand for myself, and that doesn't mean I stand up. Oh, I'm going to stand up for myself. You know what? That was my coffee. It's not that kind of stand. I'm talking about a core, core, core, core wound that has discolored and damaged the being to such an extent that the only way out is not just to pray and pray and pray it Because it seems to always be there. The only way out is to really take a stand for it and to do something, to make some kind of other outer piece. But put that aside. I have to look at these wounds, and I have to see my part in anything, even if it's 95% them and 5% me. I've got to really start looking at the selfishness and the self-centered that I may not be much, but I'm all I think about, that the self is constantly trying to run the show all the time, all the time. The ego is continuously resurrecting itself. And once again, just because I see it, it doesn't mean it's gone. It's still there. It's just maybe I see it better. Maybe now I think it's funny. Oh, God, that again. You know, I have this really funny behavior where I just like to talk over everybody. You know, like, really? You know, what are we going to do with that? So I start to call even these subtle thoughts, I start to call them defects in my character, all of them. you know and like I said before I ask people what's the most repetitive thought and it's like I'm not going to make it it always has a lot to do with vanity too my hair my body I'm not lovable you know these thoughts and so I was taught when I wake up in the morning check myself before I wreck myself and really scan the thoughts that are surfing the waves of my brain before I even get out and use the bathroom before I even get out of bed I gotta get right with God and you know I don't light a bunch of incense and put a dot and a turban I just lay there and I'm just like okay you know what me and you power mostly you because i see my untreated alcoholism i see that the mice are already running loose that self is trying to capture me that ego is trying to take me down and like we said before it's a daily reprieve it's not even a daily reprieve it's a minute by minute by moment by moment reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition every second of every day i have the opportunity to either practice a principle with god or go back to self and I already explained what my self is like and yours is probably very similar and so often I even feel like a spiritual schizophrenic like you almost don't know what you're going to get some days you know the good witch or the bad witch but it's better than me pouring liquor all over everything the world is a safer place with me wondering if it's the good witch or the bad witch and being sober behind the wheel of a car I mean the whole society is a better place with me there than anywhere else. So I start to look at this and I start to really, really identify my thoughts and I start to see that it's all in my mind, that I've got to really offer something to this power, that it's never going to change without prayer, without meditation, without really plucking it out. And I start to really watch even the subtleties of a little bit of jealousy or someone walks in the room and a little, I start to look at all of it like, oh, what was that, you know? Or I start to see maybe a phony fluctuation in my voice when I want to ask a waitress, do you think I can have a... Like, who was that? Why don't you just say, can I please have a, you know? Or going up to somebody and confronting them, you know, I just want to let you know, the minute my hand goes on my hip, we're in a lot of trouble. Really? You know? And I start to use other tools. I start to learn to lead with a question. I start to ask a question instead of make a statement. I start to shut my cake hole. Really be quiet. Don't say it. Practice the restraint of pen and tongue unless maybe once in a while something really needs to be said. But if I need to say it, I'm not in my ego. I'm not in untreated alcoholism. I'm in the application of the steps. And as I start to do that, and as I start to download, and as I start to pray, the untreated alcoholism begins to lift. And this isn't a self-help program, so I don't stand in the mirror saying, you can do it, you're beautiful, you're amazing. I just try to erase everything so I can be a blank slate. I just try to get rid of all the hiccups, all the stories, all the drama, all the, you know, I'm not being treated right, or things should be different, or I've got an opinion. I just try to open up a space to that. And what's really amazing is that the subconscious mind is where the power lives. And there's a genius inside of all of us, a very creative, intelligent force that lives in ourselves. But it's so covered up with, like they say, with pomp and calamity and all of that stuff that I need to learn how to meet the calamity with the serenity. And the true serenity is literally just having an open mind, having an open heart, being okay with what's happening. I don't have to like it, but you know what? I want to love. I want to be loving. I want to be kind to other people. And that doesn't mean I'm a doormat. That doesn't mean I hang around with toxic people. There's a lot of toxic people in AA. You know, there are. And I don't have to be friends with them all. But I don't shoot my wounded. I don't eat my young. I don't do that. I want to have an open heart and an open mind and be compassionate for anyone and everyone that comes in here. I want to carry a message. I want to be a messenger. I want to be a demonstration of somebody that's really practiced step one in my life as a way of life. And that second half of step one, it's forever. It's for the rest of my life because all of a sudden you're older or there's an illness or somebody snubbed you or you have to move or you're losing your apartment or you lost your job. There's always something and that old ego is going to come up and it's going to try to tear me down. And the bottom line is if I let it tear me down long enough, I'm going to get thirsty. I'm going to wind up at the liquor store. I don't know if you guys know, statistically they say 2% of alcoholics ever take a five-year cake. If 2% ever take a five-year cake and half of that is women, that means only 1% of the women that walk in this door ever take a five-year cake. That is so heartbreaking. What is going on? What is going on? Some things may be not being presented. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but maybe, just maybe, the message of AA got watered down and diluted, and they didn't hear. And one more time, there was eight drunk-a-logs and no message, and they said, I just can't do this. I can't drive to this meeting anymore. And I feel like for all of us, it's our job, each of us, to raise the bar, to go a little higher, to carry a message of depth and weight, to self-reflect, to even show who we are. I'm not ashamed. You know, sometimes people come up to me after a meeting and they'll just hug me and they'll cry like, oh, my God, I was a prostitute. But I could never say that. I'm not a prostitute today. Are you kidding me? I wouldn't turn a trick for an electric bill or anything. You know, like, I don't have any shame in it because I'm not that. You can hook me up to electrodes and I'd flatline. I've done a lot of work. I have a great relationship with my daughter. She's, you know, 29 years old. We're solid. I've worked things out with my family. I go see my mother almost every weekend. I can't believe it. I cannot believe that my mom is not dead and that we are really close at the end of her life. Like, this, there's no way. I never saw it coming. It was not going to come. the core wound was so hurtful she threw me away she hated me so much and it made me hate her and we were just so hurt we were at each other forever and it's so weird because we just look at each other and we both say the same thing like where did it go when it's lifted it just lifted we didn't go to therapy literally god's grace made that happen but for me yeah it took a lot of self-reflecting a lot of looking at my own self and anytime she'd point her finger you know what you did, you know, you're always making me I want to keep that I'm just like I finally got to a place of you know what, you're right, and it took a long time to get there, I used to hate, oh god, she's doing it again, you know who's putting their hands on their ears, it's untreated alcoholism, it's the self, it's the second half of step one, you know the god consciousness says, that's right fire it up, shoot an arrow at me, cool you know, you're right, I blew up everything, I blew it up I blew it up. Big deal. And when I defuse a war like that, there's nothing left to shoot. She doesn't even shoot because there's no conflict. There's nothing to even make fly. There's nothing even to make crazy or cuckoo-ness out of. You know, it's a beautiful way of life. Alcoholics Anonymous is, we are so gifted. I've spoken in other countries and it's no joke. They barely have a big book. They got meetings with like four or five people. You can get a resentment and a coffee pot in the United States and just go anywhere. You know, it's really amazing that it was started here. Thank you, Bob and Bill. We are so lucky and we don't even realize it like, oh God, I'm not going to that meeting. That bitch might be there. Then go to another meeting. Start another meeting. You don't even know what you have. It's so lucky. Get over yourself, you know, drop it, you know, enjoy your life. Be grateful for what we have because we have it all in America. I'll tell you right now. Our AA doesn't compare to anybody else. No way. It was started here. It was founded here. And people in other countries are like, oh God, I wish. I'm meeting every night. Are you kidding? There's one a week and it's 45 minutes away. We don't even know what we have. There's so much to be grateful here. Anyway, I'm going to wrap it up with that. I'm so grateful to be a part of this. Thank you guys for letting me share. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free, and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar to a month, visit Sobercast.com and look for the donate links. Thank you very much.