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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 852 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ron-l-relapse-prevention-oregon-ca-convention-1994-02.mp3 Duration: 00:57:38
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Thank you. I'm glad to be here. My name is Ron L., and I'm going to be doing a workshop on relapse prevention. And I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I work for Genesis, which is an outpatient relapse prevention center. And I also work for YIT, which is Youth in Transition. I'm also vice president of A Life Anew, and what we do is we do workshops there on self-efficacy in the recovering community center.
I'm under the tutelage of my mentor, Rick, who is president of A Life Anew, and he is coordinator of the relapse prevention program at Genesis and also coordinator of YIT. At Genesis, I do a workshop called STARS, which stands for Sober Thinking Awareness Recovery Session. And this is what we do. I work with them. We do workshops on relapse prevention, what it is and how it works. So today what we're going to do is, because of acronyms like STARS stands for Sober Thinking Awareness Recovery Session, we're going to have some fun today. It's an acronym. What I'm looking for is what is fun to you in recovery?
What do you find as fun in recovery? To have a balanced recovery program, you have to have fun, you have to have your program, and you work, and you need that balance in it. If there's some unbalance in it, the program doesn't run smoothly. So what we're going to do is we're going to work on fun today. How many can tell me what F, any word starting with F, as far as fun in recovery goes? Pardon? Fair. Good. Anything else? Anybody else? Come on. Some fun in recovery. What kind of fun can you have in recovery?
Okay, that's the right word I was looking for. Feelings. Need feelings. Feelings are important. We have to know how we feel, what's going on inside of us, what's important to us. Understanding those feelings. Real important. Now, I know you're not going to get this. To you. Unity. Okay, anything else? Okay, another one. Boy, I'm telling you guys I'm good. Why understanding? Why understanding? What's important about understanding?
Why understanding? Right. Yeah, that's good. All right, okay. We understand our feelings. Now for the last one. How many can think of something with an N? Needing. Okay. Anything else? Nature. Nurture. Now. Right. Now. That's the word. Now. Living in the now. Understanding the now. That's what's important. Fun. You have feelings, you have understanding, and it's in the now. What is this program always taught us? What is the one thing they tell us to do? Live in the now. Can't live, can't do anything about yesterday. Tomorrow we don't know what's going to happen.
But now. Living it a day at a time. Everybody says live your program a day at a time. I live my program a second at a time. Because I can't do no more than a second at a time. If I do more than that I get too confused and I lose that understanding and I lose those feelings.
[00:05:06]
Because it's just too hard for me. It's the easiest thing that I can do. And they say keep it simple. That's what I do. So that's fun. That's the acronym for fun. Feeling, understanding, now. Now. When I said we were going to be going through relapse prevention. I don't like the word prevention because prevention says it's an act of preventing an effectual hindrance. I cannot prevent anybody from doing anything.
I cannot prevent any of you from going out and use, get up and leaving here or whatever. That's your choice. But intervention, relapse intervention is a lot different. Because when you leave here, you're going to leave here with some knowledge about relapse, preventing relapse, intervening relapse, and intervention of relapse. That is something that you're going to be able to leave here with. And maybe not today, maybe not a month from now, maybe a year from now. You'll be sitting and you'll get yourself into a situation and we all get ourselves into. And all of a sudden you're going to think, God, I remember what he said about this. That's intervention.
That in the dictionary is act or fact of intervening. The interception or interaction of one state in the affair of another. In order to get into recovery, we all were told we need a foundation. Okay. There was, where am I here? Amos Maslow said there's five things that a person needs in his life. He says we have survival, safety, love and belonging, pleasure, self-actualization, to make an actual and realize the action and the fact. We need those five things to survive.
The program gives us 12 steps of how to live a recovering program, how to work a recovering program. With Rick, he did a long study about how to get into recovery, how to really build a strong foundation. And the first thing that that that's on that list is you have to make a personal commitment. Now, a personal commitment is to become willing to be willing to open yourself honestly, to listen to what you don't know.
Ask what you're not sure about. Rigorously honest when it comes to our own shortcomings and defects of character. Identify the attitude that keeps you sick. Change them through change, action, behavior. Have faith instead of fear, failure. Learn to act upon situations instead of reacting to them. That's the first thing you need to make. I needed to make a personal commitment to my sobriety. Before I could go any further, I needed to make that personal commitment.
We need to be rigorously honest with ourselves. Rigorously honest with ourselves. We can't be honest with ourselves. How can we be honest with anybody else? Hey, if I'm not honest about my relationship with myself, how can I be honest with my relationship with my significant other who's here? I can't be. How can I be rigorously honest with my sponsor? How can I be rigorously honest with my home group?
Or anybody else in my life, my mother, my children, my grandchildren. List your inappropriate behaviors. Change those behaviors. Always action. We always work at it. We don't try. We work. I've taken the word try out of my vocabulary. To me, I work at everything because I can't try to do anything. I can't try to pick up that pen there. I can't try to pick up money off the floor. But if I go there and I pick this up, there's action behind that. And I need to do that in my life. I need that action. I need to actually work on what I'm doing.
[00:10:04]
Ask how it works from those who do it. Practice what you learn. Just don't listen to it. Just don't put it in the back of your mind. Practice it. If somebody tells you that you've gone from that path, practice how they tell you to get back on that path. And then continue that practice. Because as you continue that practice, we create good habits. Somebody told me, to create a good habit in your life, you have to keep on repeating the action. That's the practice.
Talk about you, ask for feedback. Progress the grief over the loss of your drugs, alcohol. Process means to feel, to think, and to talk about it. We have to grieve our loss. What was the most important thing in our life when we were using? The drugs, the alcohol, those mind-altering substances that we were using. That was the most important thing to me when I got up in the morning and before I went to bed at night, or if I got up in the middle of the night.
The first thing I wanted was something to take. Either to keep me up, or put me to sleep, or deaden that pain that I had while I was using. Own your own feelings, good and bad. Act upon your feelings instead of reacting to them. Envision who you want to be, put a value on it, invest in it, plan on how you're going to get there, and then do it. When I came into recovery, there was a man who's my mentor now, and he did a group called MARS, which was for a multi-addiction awareness session. And he had to stand up one day and he says, I want you all to close your eyes, and I want you to envision who and where you want to be a year from now.
And all I could think of was, I wanted what he had. I didn't want to be him, but I wanted what he had. I wanted that peace, I wanted that love, I wanted that serenity that he had. That knowledge of what was going on, why he was where he was, and how did he get there. So I did that. I put values on everything today. Allow others to be themselves. This is the foundation to getting into recovery. Before we can even think about relapse prevention, we have to see about how we got into this. Why we got into it. Is this foundation stable?
Where we started. Stability. We had to stable ourselves at the beginning. We went through treatment, went through detox. We broke an arm, we broke a leg, we put a cast on it, as it mended. As you move up, this here is early recovery. This is when the cast comes off and the ace bandage goes on. This is when we feel a little mobile. We feel we can go out. We're out of the treatment center. We may be in a day program or an outpatient program or that. But we have that ace bandage on. We surround ourselves with people in recovery.
As long as we keep ourselves surrounded with those people, we feel comfortable. That's the early part. We get into the middle part. It's developing a normal balance in lifestyle. Remember I talked about balance at the beginning. A normal balance in lifestyle. I have to keep balance in my life all the time. I play a little bit, I work a little bit, and I keep that as balanced as I can. I found ways of how to enjoy myself. On Sundays we go by this friend's house, by Rick's, and we war game. Two adult men playing in a great big sandbox with little toy soldiers.
And we'll do that sometimes for six hours straight. Moving them, setting up for battle. We do 18th century battle. And there's a lot of thought behind it because we have to set up defensive move, offensive moves, and what he's going to do
[00:15:03]
to come back at me and that, and some of these campaigns that we do take three and four months to do. But that's that balance in my life. I have my fun. When I come home from work, I sit down and I relax for a while. I watch television or I play with my computer. I put balance in my life. In late recovery, it's a development of a healthy self-esteem, spiritual growth, healthy intimacy and meaningful living.
The maintenance, this is like a car. We all maintain ourselves. We maintain a car. We change oil in it. I go to meetings. We put gas in it. I feed myself. I talk to my sponsor. I get feedback. I take my car in for a 13,000 mile checkup. I have new plugs put into it. I come to something like this. I come to a convention. I go to a retreat. I rejuvenate myself. I go back to where I came from. I build that basic back again.
I build this foundation. I keep this foundation strong at all times. I don't allow that undercurrent to come out and start to crack it, to start to loosen it. These are things that I do. This is how my relapse prevention, this is how my relapse prevention planning program works by doing these things, going to the meetings, working with my sponsor. Once we're up in here, this is when we start looking at how do we prevent relapse?
What is it? We go right back to the basics. We have 12 steps that we live. I not only work my program, my 12 steps, I live those 12 steps. Those 12 steps are the things that keep me going all of the time because I live them on a daily basis. I don't say I'm working step five. I don't say I'm working step six or I'm going to be doing another step four. I live those every day. All of those are in my life all of the time.
So this is where we start, the 12 steps, admitting we were powerless over drugs and alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. This teaches us that we're not only powerless over drugs and alcohol but also over long term withdrawal symptoms that follow us into recovery. It also describes unmanageable living with inappropriate behavior, compulsion. Life will remain unmanageable as long as we return to those actions that we did while we were using.
Relapse does not happen down here. Relapse happens wherever we are on this ladder. If we're in maintenance and we forget and we stop growing and those old using behaviors come back, I'm starting to relapse. It's not taking that drink. That's way down here. That's the very last thing that we do. That's the very last thing that we do. Relapse means to go back. Now how far back am I going to go? Am I going to go back here?
Am I going to go back to middle? Am I going to go back to entry or am I going to go back to stability and start over again? That's what I have to watch. That's how I have to work my relapse prevention planning program is to catch myself here. So in step one it says we are powerless over everything and we have to continuously remind ourselves of that and remember that. Then we have to do something about it.
We have to do something about it. Step two says came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Notice that we are insane for using the drug. Every time I use, that was the insanity in my life. Describe a sobriety-based insanity, a few addictions, addiction thinking, addictive behaviors. You become accustomed to something, it's an addictive behavior if you keep on repeating
[00:20:03]
it, you become comfortable with it. It gives one an obsession or a compulsion. Think about the positive effects of using drugs. We start to think about those positive effects, we start saying I hurt, there's pain in my life today, I feel miserable. You know when I was using, I could cover up that pain, I could take care of that, I didn't have to worry about feeling that way anymore. So we go back to that, we start rationalizing about it.
To get the positive effects through what you know, even though you know it will hurt you, you still go along that run. This is denial, rationalization. Denial is an inability to recognize that there's a problem. I go through denial every once in a while. My significant other tells me that I'm hollering at her, or I'm not being patient with her, I say, oh yes I am, I'm being very patient with you, what are you talking about?
I'm not raising my voice, I'm not hollering at you. I don't recognize that, I deny that. She has to remind me that I'm doing this. I then have to do something about this, I then have to work at changing that behavior. As hard as it is for me, sometimes it's very hard because we still go through this. And I'm having a very hard time working at that, but I work on it. I work as hard as I can to take care of that, to not hurt her again, not to hurt my daughter or anybody else around me, and not live in that denial.
Three, made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand Him. Rationalization is blaming other situations, oh, here we go. When this step was applied to relapse prevention planning, it meant surrendering to the will of God in utilizing new information going through the discipline and completing a relapse prevention program. It's hard, we don't like to do that, I don't like change.
One thing I hate is change. I don't like turning things over. For a while I had a hard time with that. That discipline, it wasn't there. That understanding wasn't there. Number four is to take a peerless and moral inventory of ourselves. That one there is a very hard one. This is when honesty comes in. This is how it works when we're honest, we have that open-mindedness and a willingness to do it. We have to look at why the relapse started, what caused it.
We then have to take a peerless inventory of that. An inability to think clearly, memory problems, emotionally overreacting. Good one for me. Sleep disorder. Physical coordination or stress sensitivity. Those are the five that will cause relapse. Those are the five that we have to watch at all times. An inability to think clearly. What they mean by that is when we start thinking about losing. When it comes to our mind.
I could be better off if I knew. Memory problems, short-term memory problems, long-term memory problems. Forgetting things. And then overreacting to them. They all combine themselves. Admit to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. It says here it's not enough to personally know what your warning signs are. You must discuss these warning signs at meetings, group therapy, AA sponsors, therapists, family members.
Further get involved in a relapse prevention group. All these should be very familiar with your plan. How many have set up a relapse prevention plan and then never shared it with anybody?
[00:25:03]
It's no good to have a relapse prevention plan if you never share it with anybody. You need to share that. I talk with my sponsor and I talk with Rick quite a bit about my relapse prevention plan. And when problems come up, how do I work with them? What is really going on? Why do I feel the way I feel? Become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. In a relapse prevention program planning, it says character defects are broken down into three categories.
Involve damage caused by chronic addictive use. These symptoms require time plus proper nutrition, stress management for order to heal. This takes time. It took time for me. And it takes time, different times for different people. We all don't go through this at the same time. We don't stay six months. We stay anywhere from a year to a year and six months sometimes. It takes that long to heal. For all those problems that we have physically and mentally from using drugs, from using alcohol, for our bodies actually to heal.
And we need to keep, it says here, a nutritious background. Two, involves addictive thinking and addictive mistaken beliefs that create discomfort in recovery. Self-defeating thoughts and belief patterns must be identified by talking to others and being open to the feedback that we get. Self-defeating thoughts. I was clean and sober for a year and I relapsed. I'll never make it. I'll never make it.
I'll never be able to get back in. Why did I do this? Why did I do that? Maybe you didn't. Maybe it was just an argument about something and you sit and you beat yourself over the head with that baseball bat feeling sorry for yourself instead of doing something about it. But it feels so good as we sit here and we do this. Because we get people to feel sorry for us. I go to a group once in a while called the Hard Hitters or the Heavy Hitters.
And that is a no-hold-barred meeting. Bullshit is set aside. And they tell it like it is. And somebody comes in and they feel sorry for themselves. You know, they say this is not a dining area or a whining area. They're very honest about what goes on in their lives. And they're honest with the people that are there. Three, the third problem with thinking and living that interferes with spiritual growth and development.
When I came into this, I had no spirituality in my life at all. None whatsoever. And as time went along, I still had this big empty hole in me. I had a big empty dark hole in me. And I didn't know how to fill this. I didn't understand that. I was doing everything that people suggested to me. I was going to meetings. I was sharing with my sponsor. I was eating good. I was watching my character deepen.
But I had that big empty hole in me. I was lacking that spiritual growth in my pulmonary. When I found that out, that hole in me started to close. When I could get in contact with it, when I could honestly be honest and open with my higher power, Whomever I choose, I choose to call him God today. For the first time in a very long time, that spirituality, that closeness to my higher power is even getting more intimate.
Because I started to go back to church. A place that I really needed to be. It was important for me to be there. I had that emptiness yet. There was just that little bit of emptiness. I didn't belong. I believed, but I had no place to go to. Just that little bit of emptiness. That's the spirituality of it.
[00:30:08]
This Need for Different Approaches to Different Types of Problems was Suggested by Father Martin, He tells a very funny story, Father Martin, we at DePaul, we show a lot of Father Martin, I don't know how much Father Martin you show around here, but Father Martin is great, he is probably the greatest as far as I'm concerned, but he tells about a story, he says, if I get hit by a truck, don't take me to church, and don't take me to an AA meeting, he says, take me to the hospital, he says, and then the principles of AA will help me through that treatment, we need to go to where the problem is, if I have a physical problem, I go to a doctor, if I have a psychological problem, I go to a clinical psychologist, if I have a misunderstanding about these 12 steps or this fellowship, I go to my sponsor, I go to a meeting, so I direct myself to what the problem addresses, I go that way, I don't go any other way, I don't look for things that aren't true, this is what he's talking about.
7. We humbly ask God to remove all of our shortcomings. God created an orderly universe. Addiction destroyed that order in our personal lives, but God has also created a process of restoring order. Relapse prevention planning suggests that there is a pathway to recovery. It is not easy, but it's there. Again, we go back to chapter 5. Rarely have we seen a person fail, who has not thoroughly followed our path. What is that path? That path is all of us sitting here. You people are my relapse prevention program also.
When I go to a meeting, I listen. I share. I share my experiences to the best that I can. Last night we sat and we talked at 4 o'clock in the morning, I finally got to bed. Bill and me sat for I don't know how long yesterday talking. We talked about everything and anything. We talked about us. We were open about us. We were honest about us. When I went back to my room at 4 o'clock in the morning, I crawled into bed and my head didn't even hit the pillow and I was sound asleep.
Because I felt good inside. Because I had a chance to really express myself. To share. Just two people. Just to share. I was nervous about this. I do this almost on a daily basis, but not this way. This is entirely different to me. So I was stressed. I was tight. I had a chance to sit and talk with Bill and boy when I was done I felt great. I was relaxed. I didn't need the coffee. I didn't need the caffeine. I didn't need the cigarettes or any of that. All I needed was to sit and share with someone.
All this week I've shared. I've shared with some people who are very dear to my heart. That I love very much. That have made this trip a really important trip to me. Something that no one will ever take away from me. I saw things here that are just astronomical. The beauty. I wouldn't have seen that if I was using. I would have never seen that beauty. I wouldn't have people like this in my life to show me this. Not what's out here. All important. This is my Relapse Prevention Planning Program. Being with people.
By the way, humility is teachability. If we're not humble, we're never going to learn anything. It says we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. We humbly ask Him. How do we do that? By listening and by learning and being humble. To continue to take a personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it. I take an inventory in the morning and I take an inventory at night. I take a planning inventory in the morning and then I review that at night. Something that's very important to me.
[00:35:15]
I fell back a little bit. It says here, suggests a special form of a daily inventory composed of a morning planning inventory and an evening review inventory. That we acknowledge relapse warning signs promptly and take action to do something about them. Recognize the warning signs, admit it's there and use the Relapse Prevention Plan to manage it. Recognize it. When I lose my temper or when I'm not understanding. When my mind closes and I don't have that open mindedness that we talked about last night. I have to be aware of that. There's people around me that make me aware of it. Sometimes at 11 o'clock at night. But they make me aware of it.
And I think about it the next day. And I work very diligently at trying, at working at changing that. I used the word try, I'm sorry. At working at that. Because that's what's important. Is that I work at it. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him. Prayer and meditation will provide a source of inspiration and courage to reach for and accept help. In prayer and meditation we will find the strength and to try again for recovery. To try again, to work again towards recovery.
That's how we relapse. If we relapse up on the top of that scale or we slide all the way down because we didn't catch ourselves. There's always hope. When we came into this we saw people who were in recovery. We saw people with a lot of time. We began to believe that this works. As we were around for a while we saw people who relapsed. And they came back. And some of them stayed. And then some of them went back out again.
What did we do for those people when they relapsed? We pray for them? Didn't we ask our higher power to watch over them and take care of them while they were out there? Didn't we then think about what was going on in our lives and didn't we then pray to our higher power and ask for that help to recognize these problems before they get too far? Didn't we then go out and seek that help? If I have a problem in my marriage, am I not going to go and get counseling with a marriage counselor? If I have a physical problem with myself, am I not going to go to my doctor and say my heart bothers me or my arm is sore?
I'm going to seek out the help that I need to take care of that. We ask God to help us do that. And he talks to you people. He tells you, I listen to you, he's telling me what I need to do. When I do something wrong and somebody tells me about it, he's telling me this. He's telling me this. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him. I understand him today. He understands me. He'll never leave me. That's what I do. He'll always be there to help me push, to get me going again, to keep me going again.
The last one, which I think is the most important one out of all of them. Having had a spiritual awakening, we try to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Remember when I said I don't just work my program. I just don't work these steps. I live them every day from the time I get up in the morning until the time I go to bed at night. I live it. I breathe it. I eat it. I talk it. And I show it.
[00:40:06]
People who have known me when I was using, that see me today, know that this works. I'm walking proof of it. I'm clean and sober. They may not be. I'm a threat to them today. They don't like me. They don't want me around. Because I carried that message. I don't need to talk to them all the time. All I need to do is be there. It's part of it to talk to them, to explain to them what this is about. But just your presence there makes a difference.
It says here relapse. Relapse refers to spiritual growth. Continued sobriety for long periods of sobriety allow the growth to motivate. Those who have experienced a spiritual awakening to share their knowledge of their relapse, planning, what caused their relapse and how did they get back then. There's always hope. There's always hope. As long as we're willing to do it. That's when we get back to where we started. Fun. Feeling. Understanding. Now. When we read how it works. Honesty. Open mindedness. And a willingness to do that.
We talked about that last night. We talked about open mindedness and we talked about alone. Being alone in this program. I've never been alone in this program. From the time I came into this fellowship I've never been alone. It took me a while to learn to call on that phone because I was afraid to because I didn't want to wake somebody up at three o'clock in the morning. I learned that after a year. Somebody called me at three o'clock in the morning.
And I got up and I answered the phone and he says I need help. And I said okay. Hang on. I put the phone down. I went in the living room. I picked up that phone. I hung the phone up in the bedroom and we talked till six o'clock in the morning. I hung the phone up. I showered. I shaved. I had breakfast and I went to work. And then it hit me. This guy called me at three o'clock in the morning. I didn't get upset. We sat and we talked. Why can't I do that? Why was that fear in me and not in him?
When I became aware of this, when I became open about it, I no longer was alone. I knew I could call anytime, anywhere. I could even call Howard back there at three o'clock in the morning and I bet you he won't holler at me or say what do you want now? That's prevention. How you do it. What's important. What is important to you in your life? What is really important to you in your life? How do you really feel about your sobriety? Where do you want to go? And how do you want to get there? That's relapse prevention.
We can go through this book right here, Staying Sober by Gorski and Miller and we can read this and we can become very confused. Or we can understand it and work on it. This is where some of this material came from. It came from this book. I've read this book. This book to me was very informative and it was very inspirational to me because it helped me in my planning to intervene and not to relapse.
So this is how I did mine. I read this. I read some other books. But how do you want to do it? That's personal. Just like the spirituality in your life. That's personal. That's something only you can do. Only thing that you can deal with. You're the only one that can deal with your higher power. I'm the only one that can deal with my higher power. How I understand my higher power is me. But I know that as long as I keep a conscious contact with him, as long as I stay in this program, as long as I work these, live these steps and work Them, Number One, I'll Never Be Alone, and Number Two, There's Gonna Be Somebody There
[00:45:02]
to Pick Me Up and Move Me Back Onto That Path, That We Sometimes Move On From, But Rarely Have We Seen a Person Fail, Who Has Not Followed It. At the end of S.T.A.R.S., when I went to Mars, Rick closed his session with a song called Lean On Me, and we'd all get together and we'd put our arms around each other and he would play this and we would sing on it, and the song Lean On Me was exactly what this is all about, I learned to lean on people, I learned to reach out for their help, and that's what that song was about. Well, when I came to Genesis, I was a co-facilitator of S.T.A.R.S., and then I became a facilitator of S.T.A.R.S., and I was looking for a closing song, I wanted a closing song, I wanted something that was really important, because that song was my insolence, that song was that energy to get me to next week Saturday at 3 o'clock in that auditorium at DePaul, that carried me over for that one week, and I looked and I looked and I looked, and finally a friend of mine, who collects CDs like crazy, asked me if I ever heard of a singer by the name of Michael Bolton, and he says, did you ever hear the song that he sings, Back On My Feet Again? I said, no, never heard of it, he played it for me, and when I got done listening to that, I said yes, because that song is recovering, because in there he sings, he says, I'm back on my feet again, I won't crawl the streets again, I'll hear children sing again. For the two days that I was here, when we went riding around, and again, Mark, I thank you very much, I love you very deeply, for the good time that you showed us, I saw beauty that I thought I would never see in my life, and it's always going to be here, and it's always going to be here, because why? I'm back on my feet again, I won't crawl the streets again, I hear the children sing again, I hear my grandchildren talk today, I see what they do, I love them, they're part of my relapse prevention planning program, they're a part of me. So, let's all stand, let's all join hands, or put our arms, make a circle, two things, when you're listening to the song, I want you all to close your eyes, and I want you to envision, I want you to envision who and where you want to be a year from now, and then listen to the song.
[Recorded music plays; lyrics indistinct.]
[00:52:22]
Does anybody have any questions? About any of this? You do? How? When you're back on your feet again, you're on that right road. You want to stay strong. Sit down and relax. Well, okay. We've had fun. I've had fun, I've had fun all of the time that I've been here, because I've gone through the feelings, I've gone through the understanding today, and I've done it in the now when it just dropped on the floor.
I did that today, in the now. Go ahead. I said no, not now. Oh, you said no? Well, that's okay. We were going to get to now anyways, because it is now. Okay, when I heard it, I thought you had said now. Okay. Okay. Remember what you did when you were up here and you were listening to that song. You closed your eyes, and you envisioned where you want to be a year from now. Put value on that. Then go out and work on it.
And that'll only tell me one thing, that when I come back here next year, I'll see each and every one of you sitting here. Because that's where you're going to want to be. That's who you're going to want to be. You're going to want to be what you are today, only stronger, with more growth in you. I do that every year on my sobriety birthday. I spend some time alone, thinking about who and where I want to be a year from that day again.
And the one thing that does not enter my mind is where I came from, but where I want to go.
[00:55:04]
And that's what keeps me going today. This group keeps me going today. This group keeps me going today. Mickey's going to be in here pretty soon. And he's going to be doing a workshop. I know I'm going to end up laughing a lot. Because this man is just great. But I know tonight, this is what I'm going to have, is fun. Tonight I am going to have real fun. I'm going to be able to feel and understand then, or now.
When I leave here tomorrow, it's going to be a very sad moment. But those feelings are going to be good. They're really going to be good, because I know I'm going to be back here again. And I know I'm going to be back here again, and again, and again, and again. As long as I do this a minute at a time. As long as I continue taking that inventory. As long as I keep on setting up that plan, and putting a value on that plan, and then working on it.
The value is the most important thing to me. The work, that everybody has to do. But that value you put on it. I thank you all. If there's no questions, I guess that's the end of the session. By the way, I do qualify to be here. I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I was a pretty sick alcoholic and drug addict when I was out there using. And this fellowship saved my life. The treatment center put me together again.
They made me well. But this fellowship, you people are the ones that keep me going. That big book, the 12 and 12, the day by day. And any other meditations that I read, that all is part of my plan too. But CA is the thing that saved my life. You people, here and everywhere else. I can go anywhere I want to go. I always know I'll find a meeting. Always find a meeting, wherever I go. Thank you.