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Source: Don L – North Coast Woodstock 2015 – Steps 4 & 5 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: don-l-north-coast-woodstock-2015-steps-4-and-5-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:14:27
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Hi everybody, my name is Patrick and I'm an alcoholic. My home group is North Ridgeville Thursday Night Big Book Study, and my sobriety date is May 6th of 2014, and I'm very happy to be asked to be up here introducing Don. Before I do that, I want to talk a little bit about Steps 4 and 5, read a couple of passages from the book, and then if you indulge me, kind of just real briefly talk about how they related to me and my journey and my recovery.
Steps 4. Therefore we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step 4. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock and trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.
We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. Step 5. We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator.
We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the broad highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe. Step 6. Be honest with yourself. I've done my fourth step and fifth step again since then and it's different. It morphs because I do realize that as I continue to grow in the program, the self-honesty becomes more needed or more apparent and it changes and I'm sure it will continue to change.
Hopefully less in the future because there will be less issues where I haven't been honest with myself and with my sponsor about everything that exists. But it was a cleansing experience to be able to go through that and I think it's one of the most difficult because we obviously usually get hung up and procrastinate on step 4, but it's a necessary step for any kind of future growth and being able to actually face your fears and your demons and move forward from them.
So it was a beautiful experience for me. And with that I will introduce Don L. from Bellingham, Washington. Hi everybody, I'm Don L.. I'm an alcoholic. I want to thank Patrick for that great introduction and for stealing all the good stuff out of the book. Thanks a lot Patrick. And you said May 6th, happy birthday man. You just had a birthday, that's awesome. And I'm really delighted to be here. I've got to tell you this is great. Yesterday I went to Dr. Bob's house in Akron and for me it's like Mecca. It's Bellingham.
And I'd never been before and I didn't know what to expect. I've seen all the pictures and I know all the history and all of that. I'm down on the first floor and I'm walking around and everything's cool. I went to go upstairs and my foot hit that first stair and I just started leaking. You know what I mean? And I'm just leaking all the way up. By the time I get up to the stop of the stairs I'm just crying. And I don't care. And it just felt good. And I'm looking around and then I go to the room and there's Howard and Howard's picked up the big book and he's reading the third step prayer out loud. And I'm done at that point. I was just done.
I'm like I turn around and I'm up against the wall. I hope they don't see me. Scare the hosts, the tour guides. Who's the big goof crying in the corner? And it's nice to be a part of this week and I want to thank the committee and Kent for inviting me to come. And I'm here with a lot of old friends and a lot of new friends. And I love Alcoholics Anonymous and I love talking about the steps. I like talking about this process. It changed my life. It saved my life.
[00:05:12]
And we have a broken podium and I like that. This is good. I've got a mic and now I've got a podium I can walk around with. The thing about the book you've got to keep in mind. I think I broke it. Jesus. This is what 23 years of sobriety looks like. Send a postcard to GSO. Let them know they're doing good work. My sobriety date is September 16, 1991. I'm 23 years and a lot of change. My home group is the SOS Men's Group. We meet on Wednesday nights at 7 o'clock at St. James Church on 14th Street in the Fairhaven District of Bellingham. It's a terrific meeting. A lot of young guys staying sober there. A lot of old guys staying sober there.
I love my home group. We're a group that moves in the same direction. And that's very important in Alcoholics Anonymous with your home group. In a lot of home groups there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of motion, there's a lot of pulling, but they're pulling in opposite directions. So there's a lot of upheaval but nothing gets done. But if you get a group of alcoholics together that come together for a common purpose and they pull in the same direction, it's astounding the things we can accomplish together that we could never do alone.
And this weekend is a good example of that. So I'm just delighted to be here. I'm great that I get to talk in Steps 4 and 5. Like most of us I came here and I got the AA the old fashioned way. I drank my way here. I just really did. I don't think the courts would have got me here. They tried. I don't think my family would have got me here. They tried. The love of a good woman didn't get me here. They tried. Everybody tried to get me to Alcoholics Anonymous. They really did.
But the reality is I became a subject of King Alcohol. You know, a shivering denizen of his mad realm. And I knew that. And I was okay with that. You know, I'd been fighting to drink for so long and so hard before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that I had made an alcoholic surrender. And not the type we ask our new friends to make. The type that a broken man who's been beaten down by the disease of alcoholism and has lost the ability to fight one more day says, I can't do this anymore. I'm just going to drink.
I'm just going to stop driving because I get into trouble. I'm going to stop going to the bars because I tear them up. I'm going to stop getting in relationships because I'm just tired of running through people's lives and wrecking their lives. I'm going to disconnect from my family because I'm just hurting them every time I'm around them. And I'm just going to drink. And I never saw Alcoholics Anonymous coming. I didn't see it on the horizon. I was just trying to prolong the inevitable. I knew I was going to die drunk and I had surrendered to that.
And to be quite honest with you, although I didn't believe in God, I had kind of a spiritual outlook on it. I realized that people are made in different ways. People are made with different crosses to bear. Some people are smart. Some people are dumb. Some people are talented. Some people aren't. Some people are drunks and some aren't. And I just would have never thought growing up as a kid I would have turned out to be one of the drunks. You know what I mean?
And I had no reason, nothing that I can see in my history coming up that would have said that this guy is going to end up almost drinking himself to death and end up at the footsteps of Alcoholics Anonymous at age 31 more dead than alive. But I had tried everything I could think of to put the drink down and walk away from it. I wanted so desperately not to have to drink anymore. The fun had been gone for a very long time. I had been drinking against my will for about six years after I got the gift of self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge is a very important thing for alcoholics to guard against and to understand. I think one of the mistakes that I've made in Alcoholics Anonymous working the program over the years is I have turned a spiritual program into an academic or an intellectual endeavor. This is not academic. This is not intellectual. This is spiritual. And for many of us, because it's spiritual and it's an untapped avenue of our persona, not something that we don't possess, but something we've never tapped into.
Something we've never tried to access. Something we've never tried to bring into our daily living as a solution. And I love in spiritual experience where it says the new man suddenly realizes he has tapped an unsuspected inner resource. So I have this inner resource that I presently identify as a power greater than myself. Unsuspected. I didn't know that God was with me while I was out there drinking all that whiskey. I would have never thought that.
[00:10:05]
And so my ego would like to think that God is one of my resources along with my instincts and my intellect and my emotions. But what happens is you come here and you grab onto God. That flimsy reed with the desperation of a drowning man that turns out to be the all-powerful loving hand of God. And we think that God is our resource. And we're so grateful for that. And you continue to work the steps and you continue to evolve and you realize after a while God is not our resource.
We are God's resource. And there's a big change when that shift comes. When I understand the true nature of my relationship with my God, which is He's management and I'm labor. When I think God is labor and I am management, I have the relationship in opposition and it doesn't work. I came here working on the wrong problem. Well, I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous to get sober. Let's be serious. I love people that came here to get sober. I think that that is noble.
I don't believe you. But if that's your story, I'm not going to call you on it. Good for you. If you've one day just said, I can't take this anymore. This is no way to live. I'm going to go to Alcoholics Anonymous and become a good person. That's amazing to me. I came here because I was in trouble. I wasn't going to get sober. I was just playing the recovery card, you know what I mean? Where you tell them you're going to go to AA and everything.
And maybe if they believe you, they'll get off your back for a couple days and you can figure out your next move. Figure out where you're going to run to. Put a couple of bucks together. Maybe you can put a couple of days together and slow the voices in your head down enough so you can figure out your next scam. And that's all I was doing. I know I'm not going to stop drinking. I absolutely know it.
But I got lucky. How powerful does God have to be and how perfect is instrument, Alcoholics Anonymous, that you can take somebody who's absolutely convinced he's going to die from the drink and has no desire to stop drinking, because he knows it's not going to happen and it's too painful to dream. It's too painful to hope of a sober life. So I know I'm not going to stop drinking. How powerful does it have to be where you can come in with that attitude and yet still get the gift?
How amazing that Alcoholics Anonymous is actually set up to work not because of belief. Isn't that interesting? You believe Alcoholics Anonymous is going to work for you? There's no power there. You have faith that you're finally home and this thing's going to work out just great and all these happy, shiny people pulling for you. There's no faith there. The rubber meets the road here by who's willing to take the actions dictated in the first 164 pages of the big book.
It's very simple that it seems to me that attitude is something that develops over time here, but it's not required. Enthusiasm is helpful. It definitely makes sobriety so much more enjoyable, particularly early on, but it's not required. It seems that going through the process of the steps with an open mind and an open heart changes us. Sandy Beach used to talk about this. It's not a matter of addition.
I'm not coming here looking for all the things I'm missing. I'm coming here trying to get rid of all the things that aren't supposed to be there. It's a matter of subtraction. And by the time I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I am just wrapped up and bent over with the weight of all the things I'm carrying that should have never been there in the first place. I'm not part of God's design, and I don't have the power to get rid of them.
I had the power to acquire them, and I picked them up every step of the way. But I've taken care of them, and I've nurtured them, and now they're as deep a part of me, and they feel a part of me as my skins or my hands or any part, and I don't know how to get rid of them, and they're killing me, sober, in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because I come here with a drinking problem like all of us. I've got one problem. I drink too much.
And my first sponsor, you know, one of the first things he said to me, he said, Kid, drinking's not your problem. I said, Well, the Los Angeles Police Department would love to debate that with you. And he said, If drinking's your problem, every time you stop drinking, you shouldn't have a problem. And from your own description, every time you stop drinking, you go plain insane. In very short order.
What do you do with a thing like that where you can't drink anymore because it's killing you, but every time you stop drinking, you just lose your mind? And if you're like that, Alcoholics Anonymous is perfect for you, is what I found out. We are designed for people that go, I just can't take it anymore. Welcome. And every time I quit drinking on my own out there, in very short order, two days, three
[00:15:05]
days, six and a quarter days, at some point I would just go crazy and the voices would come into my head, you know, maybe we made a rash decision with this giving up drinking thing. And I start justifying and rationalizing and negotiating my way into the next drink. And I start putting together a list of how it's going to be different this time. Or sometimes I don't even think. But the pain of just being sober is too much and I reach for a drink very casually and I get drunk again.
And when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, that was going to happen again. Silkworth and The Doctor's Opinion promises me that a guy like me is going to drink like that again. It tells me I'm going to be irritable and restless and discontent unless I can again experience the ease and comfort which comes with taking a couple of drinks. That's all I want. Nothing wrong with that, right? Grown man, have a couple of drinks.
I'll tell you what, if I could have a couple of drinks, you'd have somebody else up here this morning. You know, I have the great obsession to control and enjoy my drinking. I can't get control and enjoy in the same room, let alone the same sentence. I mean, it's just nuts. I can control my drinking but I'm not going to have any fun. And I can enjoy it. And when I'm enjoying it, nobody else is, but there is no control.
And that's what the dilemma that I come to Alcoholics Anonymous with. Every time I quit drinking, they fire a starter's pistol. And the race is on. And the race has always been the same and the race will always be the same. It's between my recovery and my alcoholism. Now when I'm out there on the streets trying to quit drinking on my own without God, without steps, without a sponsor, without a home group, it's not much of a race.
It's like a lion playing with a mouse. Just amusing himself until finally he gets bored with the mouse and just whack, takes it out. That's my alcoholism with me with what I bring to the game naturally. These things I'm so proud of that I covet, my intellect, my instincts, my emotion. These things that work so well in other areas of my life will leave me dead where the game of alcoholism is played out.
And I don't know that. And when you are overmatched and you are bringing a knife to a gunfight, it's going to come out the same way every time. You're going to lose. I am suffering from something that I have placed myself in a position where I am beyond human aid. Yet it's the only thing I know to apply to the problem. So I'm applying my human aid with everything I have, my human abilities, and I'm failing ultimately.
I come to Alcoholics Anonymous and I get a sponsor and he tells me I don't have a drinking problem, I've got a living problem. He says your problem is your lack of power. That's your dilemma, kid. And you've got to find a power by which you can live and it's got to be a power greater than yourself, obviously, because if you had the power, even any amount of power that would have worked you, you would have got sober without us.
And by your own admission, it doesn't work. And he got me busy in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. He taught me how to be an AA member, he taught me how to go to meetings, he taught me how to be in the fellowship, and he started taking me through the steps. I'm going to talk about steps four and five today and I want to tell you something that every newcomer, every good newcomer has, and it's the most valuable thing a newcomer can have when they come to Alcoholics Anonymous.
The problem with this great possession that every newcomer has, that I quite frankly don't have anymore, is that nobody recognizes its value. And the reason that we don't recognize its value is it keeps us up at night. It keeps our eyes on our shoes, we can't look people in the eye. We're tortured by the memory of how we lived and who we did it to and how we did it to them and all the missed opportunities and the broken promises and the broken dreams and the skin and knuckles, and we're tortured by that stuff in a sober state, new in Alcoholics Anonymous, and we just don't want to feel that way anymore, we'd do anything not to feel that way anymore, and what we possess in its purest form is desperation.
We have the desperation of the dying, we're willing to take actions that only the desperation produces. And I don't have that kind of desperation today, I wish I did, but I don't. And it turns out that when we're new, this desperation is the propellant that pushes us through the steps. Now the dangerous thing about this is like any propellant that you can think of right now, there is not an inexhaustible supply.
And it appears to me, I have many years in Alcoholics Anonymous and observing what goes on here, that how much each of us have in terms of this propellant that pushes us through the steps varies from individual to individual. And you've got to ask yourself when you're starting to work the steps, how much do you have? 30 days? 60 days? 90 days? 9 months? A year? And we hear things in Alcoholics Anonymous that to me are disturbing.
And I know I try to share my experience, strength and hope up here, not my opinions,
[00:20:00]
but what the hell, I've got the mic. And it's disturbing to me that I hear about people working a step every 6 months. It's disturbing to me when I hear people with a timetable for working the steps. The only timetable I know is fearless and thorough from the very start. That's the timetable that I know of. And I know this, that the desperation that propels us through the steps runs out because it ran out in my life.
I'm a guy that made a great beginning in Alcoholics Anonymous, a great beginning. I had a great sponsor and a great home group. I was going to 14 meetings a week of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a commitment at every meeting I attended. I carried my big book everywhere I went, including to bed. If I wasn't at work or in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was reading this book or discussing it with somebody else in AA.
I was doing everything I could to keep from picking up that first drink because I was stark, raving sober earlier in my sobriety. And the only place on the planet that I had any kind of relief or comfort was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the meetings became my sanctuary. And they were a safe place for me. And they meant so much to me. And I got through the first three steps of recovery very, very quickly.
And I believed them. And I didn't disagree with them. And I did them right. And they had the desired effect. In that first step, I saw my powerlessness. I didn't have any problem with that. And the unmanageability, I had that great list that I came in with, with the great debt and the warrants for my arrest and all that stuff. But I also believed the unmanageability of any time that I run my life with what I bring to the game naturally, with the absence of God, my life is automatically unmanageable.
Because I'm living under self-propulsion. When I live a self-propelled life, I will always be in collision with something or somebody because now I am playing God. Now if you tell me I'm playing God, I will argue with you. I say, I'm not playing God. What are you talking about? I'm a loser. When I say, when something happens in my life and now it is a fact, and I say, this isn't supposed to be happening to me, that's playing God.
When I go through my entire life judging life as I see it and the people in it, and it's never right and you're not behaving the way you should, that's playing God. I think I know how things are supposed to be. And the whole world has to be set up in just the right manner for me to even be comfortable. Like Clancy says, you've got to treat me special so I feel average. So I understand, due to the uncomfortability of my emotional nature, when I am new at Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe, I am convinced that self is what has defeated me.
I believe I am selfish and I am self-centered and I am self-obsessed. I believe that I am not much but I am all I think about. I know I am the type of alcoholic that I just can't stop thinking about me. And I hate it. And it's wearing me out. It's exhausting being me. Because there's more than what you see. There's 127 different voices in my head at all times and they cannot get along. They can't agree on a damn thing.
What kind of ice cream do you like, Don? Oh, please, don't ask them that. We'll be here for days. And all I really do in the third step is I make a commitment. Called it a decision in the book, but it's a commitment. I'm going to commit to go through the rest of the program. I'm going to commit to work the rest of the steps. And specifically, I'm going to commit to work steps four through nine, which is the process that's going to be required for me to fulfill the commitment that I made in the decision in the third step.
And it's a big decision, isn't it? Loser on the drunk, liar cheating the thief, user of people, stealer of things. And I'm going to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understand Him in the third step. That's remarkable. It's a big deal. This is big stuff we're talking about. But I'm ready, because I don't want to live the way I've lived before. And I take that third step prayer with my sponsor on my knees, and bam, I feel it.
I got hit with the power of God. I felt the presence of God. And I knew I'd never drink again. And my sponsor, being a student of the big book, and by that time I understood what the big book said, there's some very specific directions and warnings about what happens after you take that third step. One of the big warnings is, of course our decision, the third step, will have little lasting effect unless followed at once, which means immediately, by a strenuous effort to rid ourselves of the things that have been blocking us off from Him.
There's only two timelines of when you're supposed to start writing your inventory,
[00:25:00]
at once and next. And I'm not hearing that direction from a lot of people with response ease. And I've got to tell you, my sponsor said he'd line me out on the fourth step pretty much when we got off our knees after we did the third step. But I had a problem. All my life I've been terminally unique. And by this time I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I'm over 92 days sober. I've been sober forever.
You think I'm kidding? Don't you remember 92 days? Do you know what happens at 92 days around here if you've got a real sponsor and a real home group? It's crazy. My God, you've taken three coins. I got a 30, 60, 90 on a key chain. I spin it around, make sure people see it. Because I'm humble. I walk into AA with a life where I've alienated everybody on the planet. Nobody wants nothing to do with me.
90 days later, I've got 100 friends. They let me in their house. They let me in their cars. They give me rides places. They vouch for me. They got me jobs. My family's talking to me again. It's a miracle what happens when God puts his arms around you, points you in the right direction. And people know you're sincere. They don't know why they believe you. You've been lying to them your whole life. They just know.
They just know, man. The truth is just the truth. You take that third step prayer and now you feel close to God and you're like, I'm on my way. And suddenly, as much as you want next and at once to be operable, you know, you've been working pretty hard. Well, you have been going at it quite a bit. I mean, 14 meetings a week, for God's sake. You don't want to rush into anything. So I did not immediately start writing my fourth step.
And I want you to pay attention to what I didn't start doing. I didn't start writing my fourth step. This isn't about completing your fourth step. The power is in beginning your fourth step. Beginning your fourth step means that you are actively engaged in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. When you are actively engaged in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, it produces a grace that I cannot explain to you this morning.
When I am not actively in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, these spiritual principles, these spiritual exercises, I am not in a state of grace. And a lot of the old stuff from my life and a lot of the old thinking and a lot of the old discomfort and a lot of the old irritable, restless and discontent starts to seep its way back into my life. That's a 23-year sober and it was definitely true at 92 Days Sober.
And by not starting to write my inventory immediately, I went from a guy who was in love with Alcoholics Anonymous, with God and his sponsor, to somebody who thought, you know, my sponsor is really not that bright. And I don't really like these people that much and oh God, she's going to share again if she shares about her dog one more time, here's the dog story, Jesus, you know. And the old behavior starts coming in and my sponsor is yanking me out of meetings and no, we don't threaten people in AA, Don.
And I'm working construction and I suck at it and I hate my job and now I hate my job and I hate my sponsor and I hate AA and the relationship that was so palatable when I took that third step prayer doesn't exist. And I'm praying in the morning and I'm praying at night and I'm praying during the day and the words are bouncing off the walls and I don't feel anything coming back to me and I feel no connectedness and I begin to think that AA doesn't work for me.
And I quit AA. I made it to about, I don't know, 120 days, hadn't written my inventory, hadn't started writing it and I quit AA. And the way I quit AA is I just decided on a Friday morning at 4.30 in the morning when I got up to go work at a job I hate that I sucked at, that my sponsor made me take. I had a resentment that I was going to leave AA because AA didn't work. Because when you've been sober 120 days, I think that's enough time, that's forever.
For a drinking drunk, that's forever. And if I've been sober forever, I think I should know whether or not this thing works or not. In 120 days, it was very obvious to me AA doesn't work. And so I decided to quit AA, decided that, you know, if I had to sign something, I'll sign something, that's okay. And I would let my sponsor know, thank you, I know you've tried so hard but this thing just isn't working for me.
I'm crazier now than when I walked in. It's getting worse, it's not getting better. I'm going to 14 meetings a week, I'm cleaning up, I'm doing everything you asked me to do and I'm crazy. Everything but write my inventory.
[00:30:02]
quit AA. I'm leaving my sister's house where I'm mooching a room off in early sobriety, and I gotta walk down this long hill, and it's quiet and it's dark, it's quiet and dark everywhere in the world at 4.30 in the morning, and I'm sad, because I'm leaving AA, and I've been talking to my sponsor about how crazy I am, and he just keeps saying the same thing, Don, it's your inventory, and I go, that's not it.
Only an alcoholic who's never done something will tell you it's not going to work. Well, how do you know? Well, I just know, I'm intuitive that way. My sponsor's been explaining to me, he says, listen man, every time I talk to you, you're never in the moment. You're always in the past in remorse, or you're in the future in worry. Past in remorse, future in worry, but you're never in the moment, you're never here right now, and the problem with that, Don, is we're a class of people that our very survival depends on a conscious contact with God, a moment by moment, day by day connection with a power greater than ourself, and you can only meet God in the moment, and you're never there.
The moment, the moment. What's he talking about? I got a head like a beehive. And so I say to him, what do you mean the moment? He goes, okay, right now, Don, you and me, in the clubhouse, are you okay? I said, well, yeah, I'm fine right now, but tomorrow I got to, you see, you just left the moment. What the hell is he talking about, the moment? So I'm walking down the hill, and I'm quitting AA, and I'm sad about leaving AA, and self-pity just hanging on you, you know, where it's just nothing better than feeling bad, just, you know, I can hear the harmonica music in my head, just sad, and then I saw him, a couple of Rottweilers, and they got out of the neighbor's house, I guess, you know, and they're doing exactly what 90-pound Rottweilers do at 4.30 in the morning when they get out of a neighbor's house.
They're having a ball, man. They're chasing each other across lawns, and they're rolling on their back on the grass, big grins on their face, leaping across hedges, and I just stop. I'm just standing there with my framing bags in my hand, my little pal lunchbox with my cheap meat sandwiches, just watching these magnificent dogs, and it just, it raised my spirits, and then they saw me. And they looked at each other, and they looked at me, and they looked at each other, and they charged me, and I started screaming like a six-year-old girl, and I start backpedaling down the hill with my framing bags and my little pal lunchbox, and they're coming at my feet just, and I'm fending them off like this terrified alcoholic matador, just fighting them off, and they're flanking around me, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, they're organized, you know, and I'm just, I was of such service to these dogs, I mean, it was like they were coming at my feet going, let's see how high he jumps this time, and I'm clearing hedges, and I'm running, I get to the bottom of the hill, and the dogs don't eat me, and they get bored, and they run back up the hill, and I'm just sitting at the bottom of the hill, and now I'm not leaving AA, oh, no, oh, no, not at least until I talk to my sponsor, because you can't waste a story like this, you know what I mean?
You got to tell somebody this tale of woe, and so I find my sponsor that night at the meeting, and like really quick, like a newcomer does, I tell a three-minute story in like 30 seconds, they were huge, they tried to kill me, they had teeth like this, and I fended them off, and he listens to the whole thing, and I get done, and he goes, well, I bet you're in the moment, and my sponsor could put a spiritual spin on anything, he looks at me, and he goes, you know, Don, I love you very much, and I know that God loves you very much, and I just hope he doesn't have to send any more Rottweilers after you to prove it, and he suggested strongly that I write my inventory, and I did, and I started writing my inventory, and before I write my inventory, I got to be convinced of a lot of things, and you know, some of them were discovered, and some of these are new ideas that we developed for the first three steps, but before I get into the inventory, the main thing I have to be convinced of is that self is what had defeated me, and we hear that word a lot, you know, self-will, self-centered, self-obsessed, and sometimes when we talk about it, doesn't it sound like it's like a coat you're wearing, or a watch, it's like, it's kind of close to you, but it's not part of you, you know, and when we say being convinced that self is what had defeated us, I have to understand what that means is being convinced that Don's will is what had defeated me.
Now I can start looking at how it manifests itself in my life. The book says I'm going to consider its common manifestations, pretty much across the board
[00:35:04]
if you cover these areas, we're going to find out what the problem is, so we're going to look at our resentments, we're going to look at our fears, we're going to look at our sex life and our personal relationships, and we're going to get this all down on paper, we're going to look at it, and like already has been read tonight, what we're going to do in the first analogy that Bill uses, because good teachers use good analogies, and it's a great analogy, and the important thing in that analogy says, you know, we're going to do a business inventory, it's just commercial inventory, it's a fact-finding, fact-facing proposition, and what we're trying to do is to discover, key word in the inventory process, discover, that means it's new information, it just means I didn't know, it doesn't mean I'm dumb, it doesn't mean I'm stupid, it just means it's new information, I did not know.
I'm going to discover the truth, not the thing I've been carrying around in my head, the story I've been telling myself for 20-odd years, I'm going to discover the truth about the stock in trade. That's why you take a commercial inventory. One of the objects is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods. If I'm going to be successful as a business owner, I can't fool myself about values, I can't have broken umbrellas and think I'm going to sell them to dummies and make a living, it ain't going to work.
I can't have dented cans and think that people are going to pay full price, I can't be stupid that way. Now the important line in this little reading for me is Bill writes this, we did exactly the same thing with our lives. Not kind of like, not sort of, not we're going to imitate it, not try to keep this in mind while we do this other exercise, he said we did exactly the same thing with our lives.
So let's think about what the commercial inventory is and how I'm going to apply that to my life. So I'm going to look inside my life, or you might want to say the cupboard of my soul if you will, and I'm just going to see what's there. I'm going to list what's there. And I'm going to try to find out what's damaged or unsaleable. I'm going to try to discover the truth about the stock in trade. I'm going to find to discover the truth about my life.
And I need to get rid of these things that are damaged or unsaleable. I'm trying to ascertain the true value of these things I've been walking around with seemingly my whole life that for some reason I can't let go of them. I love it when people say, I want to change. I had a woman, an old timer woman in AA, man, it's the best time anybody ever took my inventory. Oh, it was good. So good I always share it when I share.
She said, you keep professing that you've changed. We just want to know when you're going to improve. But I profess I want to change them. Why can't I let go of these things? These things that even the casual observer looks at my resentments and my fears and my behavior and my personal relationships and my sex life and says, this isn't going real well for you, slick. But I keep repeating the same behavior and I can't let go of these resentments and I can't seem to master these fears.
Could it be perhaps that the same issues I'm having with these manifestations itself are really just an extension of what the real problem is? I have no relationship with God. I am God. I'm driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-seeking, self-delusion and self-pity. That's my propulsion system. That is what pushes me along the road of life. And when you're pushed along the road of life by a hundred forms of fear, self-seeking, self-pity and self-delusion, and self-delusion will be dealt with with your inventory more than anything else.
A delusion is a false psychotic belief. A self-delusion is a false psychotic belief about yourself, which means you think there's something true about you that just ain't true. And by the way, we all suffer from self-delusion. And I'll tell you how I know this. I've been married 18 years to a woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, love of my life. I love her like good poetry and she is not a shrinking violet.
She is a real woman and she is more than my match. I am reading books on the side to keep up with her. You know what I mean? And we do this little exercise where I will go to my wife and I will say, on a scale of one to ten in the last 30 days, how would you rate me? She will have a number instantly. It will not be the number I am thinking of. It will never be higher than the number I am thinking of.
I will control my facial features when I want to go, what? And I will just say, okay. And the next question I will ask her is, okay, if I am a six, as you say, how would I get to be a seven? She will have an answer for that too. And it will never be the answer I am thinking of. Asked my wife that one. She said, well, it would be nice if you looked at me when I talked to you. I did not know I didn't look at my wife when she talked to me.
I had no idea.
[00:40:01]
What I thought and didn't say, thank goodness, was I look at you when you talk. I had never thought about it. See, that's called a self-delusion. That was 11 years in the sobriety, 12 years in the sobriety. And I am convinced that I look at my wife when she talks to me. I found out that wasn't true. I wonder how many other things I have been self-deluded about in my sobriety. Thousands. Because I am not running it by anybody.
And because I can't see myself. So what I do in the inventory is, I am going to start, it is a three-part process. Resentments, fears, sexual behavior. I am going to start with the resentment part of the inventory. And I am going to start with resentments because it is important because it destroys more alcoholics than anything else. The book tells me, from its stem all forms of spiritual disease. Says that when I harbor these things, I can actually kill myself.
Now how does a resentment kill an alcoholic? I am cut off from the sunlight and the spirit. Which is a wonderful way to say I am cut off from God. And if my very existence and survival and growth is based on a relationship with God, anything that cuts me off from God cleanly is not only dangerous, it could be infinitely fatal. So these resentments are not to be trifled with. So I have to get this stuff down on paper and I have to look at it.
It is really a four-column process. Some people do a fifth column. I was taught to do a four-column process. Now the first three columns practically write themselves. My goodness, I have been writing those columns my whole life. I don't really need to spend a lot of time and get a workbook about yay thick to learn how to do the first three columns of the inventory process of resentments. It's simple.
We say, you know, whom I resentful at, what's the cause, what does it affect? Those are your first three columns. You know, and if you want to put your own words to it, who am I pissed off at? What did those rat bastards do to me? And how is it screwing up my life today? You know, that will work for most of us. And so we write the first three columns and that's no big deal. I've been having that stuff, all that is is taking it from my head and getting it on paper.
That's easy. But now we're about to pivot. We're about to shift. Because that's the first part of the inventory when we're working our resentments. Now it says we're going to refer back to our list and we're going to approach it from a different angle. So you want to visually know what approach means, like instead of walking this way towards it, I'm going to walk this way towards it. I'm going to change my angle of approach completely with these resentments.
If I'm changing my approach, let's first of all establish what has my approach been prior to my new approach, okay? This has been my approach. I'm right. Now you can get as complicated as you want with that and add a lot of words to it, but it will boil down to that. First three columns, I'm right. Don't need to talk about it. You can if you want, you're not changing my mind, I'm right. The new angle is maybe I'm wrong.
Got to start there. Maybe. Alcoholics just don't go from I'm right to I'm wrong. We have to be nurtured. Mark Twain said, habit is habit and just that and not something to be flung outside and upstairs window, but rather coax downstairs a step at a time. So we're kind of coaxing God into our life and coaxing our self-will out. I mean, there's a process here. But I'm prepared to look at the list from a different angle and because it holds the key to the future.
And what's the new angle? I'm going to put out of my mind, resolutely looking for my own mistakes, the wrongdoings of others, fancy to real, whether they did them or not, whether they're in my head or they really did me wrong. I'm going to set them aside. I'm going to put them out of my mind. It's difficult to do. It's difficult to do with pen in hand. Those things are boomeranged. You can push it out of your mind, but it circles around the room and hits you right back of the head when you're trying to look for what you did wrong and what your mistake was.
But this is the pivot point. This changes our entire life as recovering alcoholics. I don't think there's anything more important than developing this ability to look at ourselves in an honest and open manner. Without this, nothing else happens. Nothing else can. I can't have a relationship with God. I will think I have a relationship with God. I think I will be an AA. I will think that I have this new society that I'm a part of and I'll never be a part of it.
I will just take the spiritual words and dressings and I will dress up my old actions and old behavior in it and I'll roll down the world doing exactly what I've always done. Lying, cheating, and stealing, sober and alcoholics. No, I have to change. And to change, I've got to see where I was wrong.
[00:45:00]
Not my part in it. Not some small sampling, like Bob says, when I look for my part in it. Funny, it's always a coincidence, it's always rather small. I'm looking for my mistakes and I'm looking for where I'm wrong. And I set them down in black and white. And my whole world changes. I'm going to tell you about my biggest resentment and how that fourth column changed my life. And how good it is to have a sponsor.
My father left when I was two years old. And I never looked back. And I wanted to have a father. I was left in poverty, with active alcoholism, in a gang-riddled neighborhood, with nobody to show me how things were done. Nobody to show me how to feel safe. Nobody to teach me how to be a man. And he had to insult the injury, went back to his hometown and married his high school sweetheart and had three other kids and stayed married to that woman until the day he died.
Never sent a dime of welfare, never sent a dime of support. He was a deadbeat dad before it was a popular term. He would quit jobs and change addresses when the courts finally did catch up with him and they didn't do a real good job going across state lines in those days. And I wrote down my resentment on my father, something like this. I'm resentful of my father. The cause, he left and never looked back.
What does it affect? It affects my whole damn life. And I didn't list anything in the fourth column. Resolutely putting out of my mind the mistakes others have made and the wrongdoings. I resolutely look for my own mistakes and my wrongdoings. I was two years old. Come on, little baby boy. You had me, you committed to me, you're my father, you deserted me. How could you do that to me? How could you leave your flesh and blood and never look back?
What kind of a man does that? He had a resentment. I'm sitting with my sponsor who's been waiting forever seemingly for me to finish my four-step. And now we're ready to go. I'm going to read my four-step to him. And I'm on my first resentment on page one. We get to my part in it, it's blank. He says, we're not off to a good start. And I exploded at my sponsor. I said, you want me to find my part in it?
What part could I possibly have? I'm a little baby. And I said basically what I just said to Howard. What kind of man does that? My sponsor says, okay, let's look at it from another angle. So how old are you now, Don? I go, I'm 32. He goes, okay, you're 32. And how old were you when he left? I was two years old, I told you that. So basically a guy that you've never met, you've never had any interaction with.
You've let completely dominate your life for the last 30 years. And I've got to tell you, the clouds parted. As in war, the victor only seemed to win. I realized that this resentment that I had was my explanation. An explanation for a life poorly lived. An explanation for my lack of education. My explanation for my violence. My explanation for my hatred of women. My explanation for everything in my life was my father's fault.
And in one moment with a sponsor doing a fifth step, it changed. And it's not like I look back at that and think I love my dad and he did the right thing. It's just not a question anymore. And as much as anything what the inventory process allowed me to do when I completed in the fifth step, is it allowed my past to become my past. Because I'm telling you, before that I was walking hand in hand with it on a daily basis.
And I really believe that we come in here and we might have 50 resentments. We might have 60 resentments. We might have 100 resentments. I've heard of people with 400 resentments. This is what I really believe. You've got one or two. One or two good ones. And they hurt you. You know what I mean? They're the ones that cut deep. And it made it possible for you to get all those other resentments. I really believe that those are the ones, if we can overcome those, everything else falls into place.
It has for me. Overcoming that one resentment with my father made all the other ones easy. They were so easy. And what I discovered, as we said, like a commercial inventory we're going to discover, what I started to discover was the truth about the stock and trade. And it's a very funny thing when you completely let the other people off the hook for even a couple of minutes where you're just looking for your mistakes.
And we're going to judge our behavior in the way we live. And we're going to put it to a test. How about this? Is this the way God wants you to live? And it became very apparent to me that I had been an abuser of everyone in my life. I had a lack of proportion and perception where my life had been lived. Where I seemed to have 20-20 vision looking out at the world and what they were doing wrong, I had no ability to look at myself.
I was shocked at the things I found in my inventory. I was completely wrong about everything. I mean, I'll give you an example. When I went into the sexual part of my inventory, going into that and starting to write, if you had asked me, have you ever cheated in a relationship? And I'd probably been in seven big relationships by that time.
[00:50:01]
I would have said I have never cheated on anyone. I wrote my inventory and found out I cheated on everyone. That is called a lack of perception. That's the kind of self-delusion that I fall under. Because what happens when I think I'm not a cheater, behind there is what I call an explanation. Well, I wasn't really cheating because we were almost broken up anyway. It really wasn't cheating because, you know, I think she was seeing her boss at work.
I never really proved that, but I was pretty sure that was happening. It wasn't really cheating because I was in Mexico. But in my mind, I'm not a cheater. I get done with my fifth step, I'm an awful cheater. And so what it starts to produce in me is a sense of humility. And that's a misunderstood word. And for me, humility just means a state of being humble. When you're in the state of being humble, it just means I'm aware of my shortcomings.
That's all. So I do this fifth step and I become aware of who I really am. I start to really see not only what the value is of what I have, but the truth about the stock and trade, which is my life. And I start to understand that what I have isn't very valuable. And perhaps I'm going to have to go about it differently. I want to talk about resentment because there's a process in the big book that talks about what I do with the resentment.
And this is good today. This is good to work with today. And it says when somebody offends to me, because before I can get to the fourth column in my resentments and start looking for my stuff, I'm going to have to change my attitude a little bit about those first three columns. And what I'm looking to interject into my opinion of these resentments is maybe just a little bit of empathy, a little bit of compassion, and God forbid, the worst thing in the world, if you want to get rid of a resentment, or if you want to hang on to a resentment, you've got to be careful about not getting this, identification.
If I can identify with what they did to me, if I can say have I ever been guilty of doing that same thing, I've got to let you off the hook a little bit. Because now I'm just like you. And I'm always gentler with myself than others. So I start looking at these resentments from a different angle. And I start thinking, okay, if somebody wrongs me, perhaps, perhaps, maybe, they're spiritually sick. Just like I am.
And then I go into prayer. And I go to God and I say, God, save me from being angry. I ask God for some things that I don't have. I don't have them. I don't naturally have these things. I ask God for a new attitude about the person that offended me. I ask him to grant me the same patience and tolerance and pity that I would cheerfully grant a sick friend. I don't have that when you hurt me. When you hurt me, I don't have pity and tolerance and cheerfulness or anything like that.
I have I'm going to get you and it's going to hurt. So I have to go to God because I don't have the power to do that. Now, if I can develop a different attitude about these resentments, I can do a more accurate job when I write that fourth column. Now, there's something that's creeped into Alcoholics Anonymous in the 23 years that I've been here that I want to talk about briefly in terms of dealing with resentments.
There is a magnificent story in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous called Freedom from Bondage. And we're all familiar with this story. And it's the story of a woman that had a tremendous amount of resentments. And the process of working the steps, the inventory process in particular, worked on every single one of her resentments. Every single one of them was handled by the process except one. And it was her mother.
And she could not get over this resentment. And she tried and she tried and she tried and she knew she was going to get drunk if she didn't get over it. So she went to someone and they suggested, she actually went to somebody, a religious person, and they suggested, they said, if you pray for this person that they receive everything that you would want in your own life, if you do that every day for two weeks, the resentment will be gone.
And so she did that. And the resentment was gone. It was a miracle. It was wonderful. And I love that story. It's so great. This is what I have a problem with. I go to a lot of meetings and I listen to a lot of stuff. And what I'm hearing now is that's how we deal with our resentments. That's not what my book tells me. That's a personal story in the back of the big book where somebody who used our process got rid of every single resentment they had.
And they had multiples of them except for one. And what I'm hearing people say is, you know, I've got a real resentment with my boss at work. I just think he's such a jerk. But I'm praying for him. You know, I'm really having a tough time with the wife. I don't know if it's menopause or what, but she's making me crazy. But I'm praying for her. And this is a problem I have with praying for people. I very rarely pray for somebody in a position of inferiority.
[00:55:00]
I am praying for you for a position of superiority. Well, you're just sick, bless your heart. Well, you know, he just can't help it. He's not that bright. And when I pray for you from a position of superiority, I am playing God again. I think I know what you need. I obviously think that you're wrong and I'm right. And I've screwed myself out of the biggest gift an alcoholic can ever receive through the process of the steps.
And that gift is the truth. How am I ever going to find out where I'm to blame? Where am I ever going to find out where I'm wrong if every time somebody offends to me, my little spiritual game that I'm playing goes, Oh, sick person, I'll pray for you, let's move on. Obviously I didn't do anything. So I go through my life and I go, this is the weirdest thing. I just keep running into jerks everywhere I go.
I'm in conflict, conflict, conflict with everybody. I got a list this long of people I'm praying for. It's wearing me out. And they're not getting better. And either am I. And either am I. Because I'm playing God. Because I've been judged, jury and executioner. And I think the way to handle my resentments. I will never get over resentment by figuring out how wrong you are and praying for you. I will only get over resentment by letting you off the hook, finding my own mistake and going, Oh my God, all this time I've been blaming you and I've been guilty the whole time of everything.
And I will never be free of my resentments unless I look at it from a different angle. My fears were very easy. It's very funny. In the few short lines in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, gave me all the information I ever needed to deal with the fear in my life. So the question you should ask if you're new is, Do you still have fear? Of course I do. Of course I do. I try not to get into the recovery speak.
I'm a fear-based individual with low self-esteem. All I know is this. I wake up in the morning and I don't know what happens when I'm asleep, but there's a higher power, there's a lower power, there's a conscious contact and there's an unconscious contact. You know what I mean? And I wake up blue most days. I'm just a little off-center every day. It used to scare me. Early in sobriety I thought I was doing something wrong.
I used to tell my sponsor, I just wake up depressed. He goes, Are you awake now? And I go, Yeah. He goes, Don't worry about it. What the hell? And well-meaning AA members say, Well, if I got into your dreams and all that. And it's like, Nah, that didn't work either. And now I just go, You know what? I wake up blue sometimes. And I've got it down to about 45 seconds. I go from waking up feeling a little blue to I'm okay in 45 seconds.
Because I hook up with God immediately. And I don't think about the fact that I'm blue again or I'm a little depressed again and gee, I don't want to go to work again. Because I'm spiritual on a work day. The first word in my head is God. Unfortunately, the second word is damn it. You know? So I still have fear in my life and I still wake up a little bit blue and I face fear throughout the day. You know, I have business things that cause me fear.
I have relationship things that cause me fear. You know, I just have a head. It's a conveyor belt, you know? It just brings me that same stuff. Good, bad, happy, or sad. Sometimes it brings me sad stuff. And, you know, it produces fear in me. But I learned in the inventory process what my problem was. And I love Bill because Bill kept it really simple for a guy like me. We put our fears on paper. We listed them before us.
And we analyzed our fears. We asked ourselves why we had them. And before I even have the chance to answer the question, because Bill knows I'm going to lie, because I'm going to lie. I'm going to explain how it's my mom's fault, my dad's fault, society's fault, that gang neighborhood I came from's fault. Bill answers the question for me. And he poses his answer in a question. Well, wasn't it because self-reliance failed us, Don?
Well, self-reliance is good. It's good as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough where the fear problem is. Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it didn't help. And sometimes it made us cocky, and then it was worse. No, we think there's a better way of dealing with our fear. It says we trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We're in the world to play the role he assigns. It says when I have fear, this is all I do.
I admit to myself honestly, you know what, I'm scared. I don't have to justify my fear to you or anyone. I'm just scared. I'm over trying to pretend I'm not scared. I'm scared. Okay, what are you scared of? Well, I'm scared it's not going to work out for me. I'm scared I'm going to lose my job. I'm scared she's going to leave. I'm scared she's going to come back. Whatever it is, I'm scared. So I admit them to God.
Here I am again, buddy. Just one of your kids that know you love me. Just one of your kids will know you love me and I'm scared. Please remove my fear, the second part, I admit it, ask God to remove it, God take my fear away. God is very good at his job, by the way, alright.
[01:00:03]
Once I ask God to do something, I don't have to watch. I don't have to ask if he needs any help. I don't need to ask him if he's done yet, okay. I ask God, I tell God what fear I have, I ask him to remove my fear. I leave God alone while he's doing that and now I ask him to direct my thinking. It's my next prayer. These are all prayers. Direct my thinking to what? Well, happy puppy dogs because I'm afraid and I don't, direct my thinking to what you would have me be.
Wow! That's a new thought, huh? All my life, what have I tried to do? Figure out what she wants me to be, what they want me to be, what society wants me to be. So what? So I can get what I want. If I can figure out who I have to be so you like me and approve of me, I'll get what I want. So even behind these seemingly kind, generous, understanding facade I operate under, right understand that underneath that is a guy that's playing God who wants what I want when I want it.
This is brand new. Direct my thinking to what you would have me be. And you know what's funny? When you ask God to direct your thinking and you think about what you look like doing God's will, you get an answer like that. You may not like the answer because it may involve helping somebody else, but you will get an answer. And what's the promise when I'm in that process? At once, I commence to outgrow fear.
Commence means begin. Doesn't mean the fear is removed. It means that there is a relief that I can sense in me. I'm still scared. I'm not as scared. And if I stay in that directed thinking of what God would have me be, I'm going to stay in that directed thinking, I feel a lessening of the fear. Fifteen minutes go by, it's really almost gone. Half an hour gone, I can't even remember what I was afraid of.
Because I spent a half an hour thinking about what God would have me be while he was removing the fear. Let God do his job, let me do my job. God's job is to remove the fear. My job is to go do what I think he would have me do and help his kids. When we are doing that together, then I get to be a resource to God. He's not a resource to me, I'm a resource to him. It's the correct nature of the relationship.
My fear doesn't stand a chance. And of course, you get to do that long enough and you get to live with fear and you get to walk through fear. There's also a lessening of the stuff that you were so afraid of earlier in sobriety because you start to find out that, like Howard said, 95% of the stuff that you worry about never happens. And all this bad stuff that does happen to you, and bad stuff does happen to us, we never see coming.
And if you never see it coming, why worry about it? Man, I'll tell you, I lost a tire. I didn't have a flat tire, I lost a tire in my work vehicle a couple of months ago. You know, 60 miles an hour, and the tire just walked right out, axle and everything just walked right off of the vehicle. I didn't see that coming. There was some intense prayer going on in the cab of that van, let me tell you, because I just kept saying over and over, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, as I was fishtailing down the road.
But I never saw it coming. You know, can you imagine your life if you just walked around going, God, I hope my tire doesn't fall off my car today. It's like, you'd be exhausted. I mean, think how long that list would be. I'm running short, so I want to get through this quickly. So then we're going to go to our sexual inventory, and we're going to get down to there. And look, this is my misconception of sexual inventory.
This is for the men, okay, and I'm sorry ladies, I don't mean to exclude you, I just don't know, I don't understand women, and I know it's different, and I just talk about the furry rat bastards that I sponsor, you know what I mean? Jesus, they're all the same. The inventory is not a hit list. The sexual inventory is not a hit list. This is not a conquest list. This is not, I'm going to put down everybody I ever saw, but this is, you know, it's so weird to hear a guy read his sexual inventory, and you know that the son of a gun is proud of it, you know what I mean?
Because he's approaching it from the wrong angle, because what we're supposed to be doing is writing down people we've been in relationships with, and how do we treat them? And we have some specific questions that we're going to ask ourselves in regard to that relationship. Where have we been selfish? Where have we been dishonest? Where have we been frightened? Have we aroused jealousy or suspicion?
And we ask all these questions for one purpose and one purpose only. When we get done, what we're going to do is we're going to add the scorecard, and if I go I've been dishonest, I've lied, I've been hurtful, I've aroused jealousy, aroused suspicion, I've been unfaithful, I've been self-obsessed, it's all been about me. If I add that together at the end, the word I write down at the end is selfish.
And I look at my relationship history, and I go in every relationship I've ever been in, it's been about me. I didn't care about you. And you think that goes away in sobriety? Because you got sober, stopped drinking whiskey?
[01:05:01]
Oh my God. I mean, I remember the day I realized that my wife would be in a bad mood, and I'd go baby, baby, what's wrong? Come talk to me. Tell daddy everything, you know? And she's just been, and because I'm nervous, because I think it's about me, because she's in a bad mood. And she'd go, no, no, it's not about you. And then she would start to tell me what it was about, some struggle at work or with her sponsee or something.
And the minute I realized it wasn't me and she started talking about what it was, my interest level dropped, whack. About 50 percent. Now I already told you that I love my wife like good poetry, 50 percent, whack. And now she's got like two minutes, because man, she's got a two-minute window, and then I really don't care what's going on. Because you start that one, and then she said, and then I said, and I know what she meant, and it really hurt my feelings, and I remember that time last summer, and my eyes were rolling up in my head.
Because guys, we don't have those problems. We just go in the alley, and we beat each other up, and then we're best friends for the rest of our life. But the selfishness that I recognized in myself, many years sober, that I can go to you under the guise of concern, man, you seem like you're struggling, baby, I love you, God, what's going on? Is there something I can do for you? And what I should say, is this about me?
It's not? Good. Good luck with all that. These awakenings to the selfishness, so what am I doing with this inventory about my sex behavior? It's very simple. It's not about sex or technique, or how much sex, or how you, we don't care about none of that. We don't care about that. It's not about that. It's about now that I've subjected that thing, and I've got this idea that I'm a selfish, self-centered, plain God individual in my sex life, in my personal relationships, can I let God be the director in that area of my life too?
Can I subject every new relationship to the test, and even the one that I'm in consistently, can I subject it to the test as the days and weeks and years go by, because if I don't consistently do this, I'll revert to old behavior, it's my default setting, me, is it selfish or not? When I'm arguing with my wife, trying to get her to see my point of view, can I stop for a moment and go, is it selfish or not?
My wife knows what's happened. When I'm in the middle of it, and I'm winning, and I'm making my point, and I'll go, never mind, forget it. You're right, I'm wrong, let's go do that. She goes, you just worked your program, shut up, don't point it out to me. Don't rub it in my face. Not well yet. We take all of this information, and it tells us that we better do something with it. It says we better do a fifth step.
And it says this is difficult, perhaps, discussing these intimate details with a stranger or somebody that we don't know, or with another individual. It says that we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient. Why? Because it's different in my head than it is in your ears. I always love it when I'm here in an inventory, and they stop, and I go, let me explain this part first. Because that's what I do in my head, don't I?
With my resentments, my fears, my sexual behavior, I explain it to myself in my head, in my voice, and it's always better than it really is. Man, there's something powerful that happens when you sit with another person, and God is you understand him, and you put your truth out there in the air, and it's free, and you get to be yourself for just a minute. No justification, no rationalization. And you're prepared for a long talk.
I'll give you some of the ins and outs of the fifth step. My sponsor taught me the way I do it today. I don't do fifth steps during the week. I only schedule them on the weekend. And that's because for me, it's a time that I have an unlimited time. And it's really about, I won't have somebody come over and do a fifth step and send them home and have them come back and finish it the next night. I won't do it.
We start, we finish. I don't care if it's 14 hours, I got coffee, I'm not worried about it. In the fifth step, it says that I have to let the person know I'm going to do my fourth step with it. I am engaged in a life and death errand. When I receive a fifth step, no matter how many hundred I've heard, I don't want to get jaded and think because I've heard so many and this is, it's all the same, that I am not engaged in a life and death errand for the person reading me their fourth step.
It is an honor and a privilege to hear the fourth step, and it deserves to be treated as such. So I make unlimited time for it. I won't do it during the week. I'll give it all the time, and I'll clear the deck. Nobody's at home. We got the whole house to ourself. Everything's going. We got plenty of coffee. We don't have a cure in the world. You take as much time as it needs, and we're going to be prepared for a long talk.
And we do that, and we do our fifth step, and the one last thing, and I want to close with this, and for anybody that's going through this process and maybe hasn't done your first step, I want to tell you what happened to me when I did my fifth step.
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I did my fifth step, and I'd been going to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and what I'd been hearing was all this cool stuff that happens after you do your fifth step, and I was well aware with the fifth step promises that you read, you know, after we take this step, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. Our fears fall from us. We feel the nearness of our creator. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease.
You know, we might have had certain spiritual beliefs now, but now we begin to have a certain, we have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. I feel like I'm walking on the broad highway with the spirit of the universe, and I was ready for some of that, right, because I'm crazy, and I read my fifth step, and I wait, and a day goes by, and I'm still crazy, and I wait, and two days go by, and I think I'm crazier, and three days go by, and now I know I'm crazier.
I call my sponsor, and I go, we need to talk, like now, and he goes, what's up? I go, fifth step? He goes, yeah. I go, I think we did it wrong. He goes, well, what makes you think we did it wrong? I go, listen, buddy, we've done this thing, and now I've never felt so dirty, filthy, and disgusting in my life, and he goes, oh, that's interesting, Don, because I was there for your fifth step, you should feel dirty, and filthy, and disgusting, because you haven't done anything yet.
He goes, this is a great beginning, because you're going to be doing six and seven for the rest of your life, and now, you know, you're going to get some skin in the game. When you go into eight and nine, you're going to get some skin in the game. You're going to go back out to your fellows and repair that damage. We're going to see what kind of alcoholic you are now. He goes, Bill wrote in the 12 and 12 that the sixth step separates the men from the boys.
He goes, I don't need your fifth step. It's going to be the ninth step for you, Charlie. He let me know straight up. The thing that's so dangerous about the fifth step, you've got to keep this in mind, I'm an AA geek. AA geeks do things like, we go to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, we go to the book section and we rescue abandoned big books, right? A poor little big book. Damn slipper couldn't even bring it back to the clubhouse.
So I buy big books. I buy big books to give them out, you know, to have them at our book study, whatever. And I always look at them. They always got a name. You know what I mean? They got a name and they got a date. And you go, wow, this belonged to somebody. And you go through it, you know, and you start seeing it's highlighting. And it's all the good stuff. Man, they got the doctor's opinion, perfect.
Little notes in the margin. I go, yep, that's right, that's right, that's right. You know, I'm critiquing their recovery, you know. They're going to be dead drunk somewhere, I don't know. You know? And I'm like, it's like hanging out with a ghost. Because the rooms are filled with ghosts, you know what I mean? They are. And so I'm holding on to some ghost big book. And all the highlighting is there through the first step, second step, third step.
Inventory process, man, they got it all there, you know. Inventory stops, boom. Not another highlight in the book. Because they weren't doing the amends process. And this is why it's so dangerous. When you're done with all the stuff we talk about, how important the inventory is, how important the inventory is, we think it's more important than any other of the steps. It is not. It is part of a process, steps four through nine, to effectively turn our will and life over to the care of God.
And then we can use steps 10, 11, and 12 to make sure that our will and life stays permanently turned over to God. But we haven't done anything except we're halfway through the process. And now we have to keep going further. Because what you really have is incredibly dangerous as an alcoholic. It's nitroglycerin. You have, for the first time in your life, with no justification or rationalization, no framing, no story you tell mommy, self-knowledge.
And we've already read in the book that self-knowledge avails us nothing and that for the real alcoholic, he will absolutely be unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. And that's what you got when you're done with your fifth step. You know more about yourself than you've ever known before. When you're done writing your fourth step, what does Bill write? If you've been thorough and honest to this point, you've probably digested some large chunks of truth about yourself.
When you get done with the fifth step, you know God better, you know your sponsor better, and for God's sakes, you know yourself better. And it's dangerous if you stop there. So hurry, hurry, lest the test comes early. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you.