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Source: Craig W – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-02-13.m4a File: craig-w-box-of-chocolates-2025-02-13.mp3 Duration: 00:51:09
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They Don't Need to Hear Me So Much. All right. Thanks, Ramona. Good evening, everybody. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Craig. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon to anybody and everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to share. I see some familiar faces. Good to see you all. Thanks for being here. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share with you my experience, strength, and hope. Sobriety date is 11-28-1998.
By the grace of God, I had 26 years this past November. I have a home group. We meet 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursdays. So if you'd like to attend, please feel free to link up with me after if you're looking for a late night meeting or a dinner meeting or an early meeting, depending where you are. I have a sponsor, a service sponsor, and I had the opportunity to sponsor and serve a sponsor, one of the most important parts of Alcoholics Anonymous and one of the most biggest privileges and sacred relationships et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So I'll just start with the obvious. My family was just devastated by alcoholism long before I was even thought of. Long before I was even thought of. People had passed away before I was even born from alcoholism. People were still dealing with the ramifications of alcoholism when I was old enough to even understand what someone's name was. I was surrounded around drinking from a very early age. I was stealing jello shots and beer bottles and what was left over in the red Solo cups, you know, 4, 5, 6 years old.
First time I ended up in the back of a New York City cop car, I was 5. I think that was more of a lesson, but that still had something to do with alcohol. I wouldn't say, even though my behavior was affected by alcohol at that age, yes, that early, I wouldn't say alcohol really did anything to me in the sense that we're identifying with our book Alcoholics Anonymous until probably about 11 or 12. I couldn't tell you exactly when I crossed the line, but at some point I crossed the line.
I grew up, you know, again, I thought it was normal. I was a latchkey kid and nobody came to pick me up because either my mom was working and the people that were supposed to pick me up were drunks or my mom was with drunks and the people that were supposed to pick me up, either there was an accident or they were behind or unmanageability, but I was always sort of left on a stoop. That was like the story of my life.
Waiting on a stoop for my father to show up one day, waiting on a stoop at the end of latchkey for someone to pick me up, waiting on a stoop at my apartment so someone could bring me to my baseball game. It just seemed like I was always behind waiting for somebody and all this is due to someone else's drinking, obviously. The men in my family were the ones that were outwardly violent when intoxicated. They ended up, you know, in jail, incarcerated, stuff of this sort.
Some of them passed away early and it seemed for the most part it was the women, obviously, if you're new here, not that it's isolated to any particular gender, this is just my experience, but it seemed the women were mostly neurotic, trying to control and manage all of that unmanageability, with the exception of my grandmother. My grandmother died when I was 16, but she would be at parties, heavily intoxicated, and she was the matriarch of the family, so nobody really called her anything. She was allowed to get undressed, she was allowed to yell, she was allowed to throw things, and it wasn't a big deal because it was granny, you know what I mean?
But this is, again, this is all of what I'm surrounded by, before I even hit my 10th birthday. I remember crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and looking up at the sun and begging, you know, because that was my idea of God at the time, I guess, or whatever, and my mother was praying, my mother worked three jobs, but she brought me to my, she found a way to get me to everything, and you know, she would have holes in her clothes, but she would make sure I had what I needed, but I just begged for this car to go over the bridge so that I could just be done with this family, because I was just, it was just so much pain.
And that wasn't to my mother, because my mother was always there for me, but my mother was still a part of that, and I just wanted to be out. I won the New York City writing contest. I wrote about the, she was the first female congresswoman at the time in Staten Island, and I won this award, and I met the mayor at the time, and blah, blah, and then they wanted me to write something else, and I wrote this thing about my father. I wrote about all this time I spent with my father in the summer, but it was a lie.
I didn't, I didn't spend one
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minute with him, but that's what I did, you know, because I was just in so much pain. And again, I'm spending time with this, you know, some of you have just heard my story, I'm trying to bring different aspects in, like, that was all, even though alcohol wasn't really being ingested as much yet, I was still affected by alcohol. I grew up wanting to kill people, because I was so angry, even before I was 10, I wanted to kill myself, even before I was 10. Again, this was all a byproduct of alcoholism, and being around a lot of people that were intoxicated, often.
I can tell you a few more war stories, this and that, about being around, you know, the family, and this and that, but I think you get the picture. The other thing I want you to know is, even while all this was happening, I was always trying to rescue animals and feed the homeless. Like, I had a very big heart, and I always wanted to do the right thing, I always wanted to do for people. I always wanted to try to be honest and helpful.
And I lost access to all of that, because of drinking. If you're new, or even if you're here a little bit, and you're not even sure exactly what it means to be alcoholic, and you haven't got that opportunity to connect with a sponsor yet, and get through those first 44 pages, I could give you a quick summary for me. When I ingested alcohol, I was already thinking about the seventh or eighth drink. Like, that was one of the telltale signs of me being alcoholic.
As soon as I ingested alcohol, I was already in my mind thinking about the seventh or eighth drink. When alcohol entered my body, after I had crossed the line, like I said, around 10 or 11, there was no telling what was going to happen. There was a handful of times where I had a few, or the evening was ended early, because of either a blackout, or some sort of intervention, usually with police officers, or a fight, or something.
For the most part, once alcohol entered, I had no clue what was going to happen. Another indication of what it means for me to be alcoholic is I have this abnormal reaction to a perfectly normal liquid. Once I ingest it, all bets are off. This is why, even at 26 years sober, I make sure when I go to hibachi, they keep me off my rice. Or when I'm getting certain pastas, or certain soups, or whatever, I don't have any alcohol in them.
Because I don't want any alcohol whatsoever, anywhere near me. I'm not buying tiramisu, I'm not buying rum cake, I'm avoiding all that at all costs. And then another big one for me, which I sort of expressed already, is the hole in the soul, the spiritual malady. This inability to be at peace. Coming in many different forms, I mean, we could spend an hour just on that. I'm either the best in the room, or I'm the worst in the room. I'm always finding fault, or I'm always being critical, or I'm always the most important, I always want to hide.
And there's such polar opposites. But the bottom line is I'm never at peace. And I'm at the least peace when alcohol is inside of me. I'm sorry, when alcohol is not inside of me, I'm at least peace. As crazy as some of my stories are with my drinking, and granted I was young and all of that stuff, and I was also involved in some other things that young kids really shouldn't be involved in, but it was…
I felt better when the alcohol hit me. I felt relief, you know? Which is why early sobriety was so hard. I literally didn't know what to do. Because all I did was drink. 24-7. Everything revolved around drinking. My thinking revolved around drinking. My drinking revolved around drinking. I never had a legal drink. Where was I going to hide it? Did I need to report to the probation officer? I want to make sure I have a little bit so I look like a good guy and give you some, but I want to make sure there's some when I'm home. I want to make notes in case I forget where it is and I have it.
I want to stash some. I want to get some from you. All of this madness, which I would identify with if you're an alcoholic like me. It's just insane to talk about it now. This is what I did. It was exhausting. Exhausting. I needed to drink before everything. My grandmother that I told you about, she died when I was 16. Another perfect illustration of my alcoholism. My mother called me up and said, your grandmother's in the hospital dying.
Turn on the hazards. That's what you did in Jersey. As long as you turn on the hazards, it doesn't matter if you're not allowed to drive. You're fine. She said, just turn on the hazards and hurry up and get to the hospital. My
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grandmother was dying. Of course, I've told this story a million times, but it still hits me the same time every time I tell it. Of course, I wanted to get there to see my grandmother, but what do you think I needed to do? I needed to drink. Because of that drinking, I didn't make it on time, which was a regret, but it's not a moral issue. I told you, I grew up with a good heart, wanting to help animals, feed the homeless. I had this instinct to be useful. It's more about a lack of power.
I didn't have the power or the ability to say, all right, I'll drink afterwards or let me get there first and see her and then I'll have a sip. It was so innocent. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I had one of those phones that were the size of a VCR. You remember those things? You look like you're on a flight with NASA up to space. I had one of those things. You pulled the antenna out. It was as long as a baseball bat.
Anyway, I'm on this phone, and I remember telling myself, I just need to have a few of them to calm me down. I'm going to have my hazards on, so I'll be fine. I won't get pulled over. I can make it to the hospital. If the cop does pull me over, you know how we are. We got it all figured out. We got everything all figured out, which is why we're so upset when it doesn't go our way, because we have it all figured out, and we swore we knew exactly how it was going to go.
That's another indication that I'm alcoholic. Besides the obvious delusion that I can't control my drinking, with or without alcohol, I suffer from the delusion that I have any sort of control whatsoever. It's so true, just fast-forwarding to current-day sobriety or Alcoholics Anonymous in the steps. It's so true, what we've heard for years, whether you're in the old book, 449 Acceptance, or you're in the new book, whatever.
When someone else bothers us, that's when there's a problem with me. Anytime I do my inventory, my nightly review, make amends, it's always about control. If I'm upset, it's because I lost control or it didn't go the way I wanted. Anyway, I was in 17 or 18 institutions by the time I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. Incarcerated several times, outpatients, multiple high schools. Again, it's not what made me alcoholic, but these were all byproducts of my alcoholism. These were all things that happened because of my drinking. I had delirium tremens at 17 years old.
I suffered from panic attacks. I'm still terrified. Those panic attacks were so terrifying. When you're that young and they're that new, and you're detoxing at the same time. You've got to remember I'm obviously not 85 or whatever, but the reason I love service and Alcoholics Anonymous so much, and I'll get into that a little later, is because I remember being in a crisis intervention center, literally having DTs and detoxing from alcohol.
The nurse and the doctors understood that I had a problem with alcohol, but nobody anywhere at any point mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous or alcoholism. It was like sort of this thing that… It was so dark. I had no idea what was going on. If you've had panic attacks, you know how to control you feel. I'm trying to just negotiate myself what it means to not have alcohol, but I'm also having these and I can't breathe.
This is what I did. Because of that, I became institutionalized. I ended up in so many treatment centers as I explained to you, but what I would do when I would get panic like that, and because what do we do as alcoholics? We learn things, right? I learned that if I punched a staff member in the face… I'm sorry, but this is a true story. I learned if I punched a staff member in the face, they would all jump on me and they would restrain me, and they'd shoot me up with something to relax me, and I'd have a friend sit with me for about four hours. So that's what I did.
As soon as I got to an institution, as I punched somebody in the… It was a gentleman. It was always a gentleman, and I was nice to him up until I hit him, but that's what I did. And then I would get strapped up and shot up, and I would just sort of talk with… It usually was an older lady with gray hair. That's usually who sat with me. And we would talk about just life. Never about alcoholism. But anyway, so this is my life before I'm even 19. All these institutions, incarcerations, kicked out of schools, family passing away from alcoholism, people not showing up to pick me up, father not there because he's drunk.
This was my story. So I came here like all of us. I'm no different, but I came here broke and unable to stop drinking and worn out and tired and exhausted. and Worn Out and Tired and Exhausted,
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and all of those things that I needed, the big H word, hopeless, in order to get well. That's the short, simple version. There was many more fights within institutions. There was a situation once, my poor mother, she had to bring me into three different hospitals in one day. Every time they strapped me up, I escaped, and they had to get the cops involved. This is what, I mean, I'll never forget, I tell this story all the time too, I'll never forget my first time I was getting picked up for sober softball, and the guy was just a few minutes late.
Like, I was so angry at him. And then I just think back to what I'm telling you guys and sharing my story about how I would just disappear for two weeks from my mother, with no consideration of how she felt. Or when I was in an institution, run away, with no consideration of what that was like for my mother. It didn't even cross my mind that she had to leave work. It didn't even cross my mind that she might lose her job.
I got another one for you. My mom drove three state lines to come get me out of jail. She stayed in a hotel that night where a guy was murdered. Again, not me directly, but because of my drinking, this is what she's constantly exposed to. And this is a true story. And it's hard to say, my mother just died recently, and I loved her to death, and she was a great member of Al-Anon, a beautiful woman, and we had such a better relationship because of AA in the later years.
But I literally, I walked right by my mother and went to the payphone to call someone to pick me up so I can go drink. Like, I didn't even really acknowledge her. Like, this is how selfish and self-centered, this is what I became. The guy who was rescuing animals and feeding the homeless, this is what I became. And again, it wasn't because I'm a bad person. I'm still not a bad person. I just became that demon obsessed with alcohol and everything revolved around alcohol and everything only mattered to me, what I needed, what I wanted, what I could get.
So I think you get the picture. I drank often. I couldn't control my drinking. Even when I had a few, it still ended up bad. For me, there was a lot of rehabs, institutions, and jails, and I was institutionalized, and there was a lot of neglect and abandonment within my family, surrounded around alcohol. And of course, I ended up doing, I didn't have kids, but I would still rescue animals from the housing projects when I was drinking, but then I wasn't able to take care of them.
So in turn, I ended up just like my father and the other men in my family. I abandoned those that I loved, not because I didn't love them, but because I didn't have the power to think outside of anything other than a drink. There was a period in my drinking days where I would jump the battery just enough to get to the store for a beef patty and a 40. That's how I would start my day. That's what I did.
So that's me. That's the alcoholic. And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was going through some stuff the other day, and I actually found a letter from my old probation officer. And we read the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we see how many non-alcoholics were important in us getting started in different cities and states, and even with individuals' sobriety. I mean, obviously, the number, if you go around the room and ask someone to name a non-alcoholic that helped us, everybody doesn't name Lois.
Obviously, she's one of the big ones, though, right? But that probation officer was sort of like a Lois, obviously, different relationship, but sort of a Lois for me. I mean, I don't know why. He just took to me. He was very nice to me. He bought me a suit so I could visit my mother before I went to rehab, and he wanted me to get well. And I didn't know how to behave. Guys, I wanted to get sober. I did, but I still didn't know how to behave, and so I got thrown out of an institution.
I was ready to get sober. I wanted to get sober, and I still got thrown out of that institution, and I was homeless, and my probation officer said, just don't drink, and I won't violate you, and just keep in touch, and it was very helpful to have that support. Sometimes we're hard on our fellow brothers and sisters, and we forget about all those people that were patient with us and all those people that were super supportive with us.
I forget that. Anyway, long story short, I'm now homeless and going to Alcoholics Anonymous at the time in South Florida, and my first home group was a young person's group, and I loved it, and I was the alternate coffee maker even though I had no home to live. I didn't have to bring any of the utensils there. Someone else did, but by being there, I was early for the meeting, and I got to talk with young people in AA that were involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, that were involved in the Young People's Committee, that were involved with intergroup and general service, and I got to hear about all that stuff and hear about the bigger picture of AA and hear about the steps over and over again, and I ended up getting myself a sponsor, and I'll never forget the first time I met my sponsor.
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Well, this is my first real sponsor. I had some unfortunate events. I usually don't tell that story when it's being recorded, but I had some unfortunate events with quote-unquote potential sponsors, but here was my first sponsor, and Tommy came up to me, and he's like, hey, man, how you doing? I'm Tommy. He's like, you're angry, man. I could tell you were so angry, and he was right, and we got right into the work, and the first thing he gave me was a prayer.
God, I'm an alcoholic, and I need your help today, and he said, if you're alcoholic like me, which it seems like you are, because at that time, you saw me at the meetings and stuff, but program's perfect. People aren't, but you can't afford to just say hi and bye to God. He goes, we're not here to judge what other people are doing, but we need to do more than just say good morning and good night. We need to talk to God all through the day, so that's what I did, whether I went to a meeting, whether I went to bed, whether I was on a scooter on public transportation at the beach, whether I was in trouble, whether I was being good.
God, I'm an alcoholic. I need your help today. God, I'm an alcoholic. I need your help today. God, I'm an alcoholic. I just did it over and over and over again, because at the end of the day, for those of us that have been through the steps, we understand the whole purpose of this is to have a conscious contact with a higher power. It's when I have a conscious contact that I'm right-sized in my relationship with my family, that I'm centered and grounded in my role as a GSR, that I'm awake and alive and well as my role as a sponsor, as an employee, you name it.
So we went through the first 44 pages of the book, and I found out how to concede to my innermost self that I was alcoholic. I knew that I had problems. I knew that there was issues. You just heard my story. Obviously, we knew I had an abnormal life, even though I thought it was normal at the time. But I actually got sort of relief understanding that why I didn't show up for my grandmother at the hospital because I needed to drink, why I had this obsession, why everything revolved around alcohol, why I always had this voice in my head, always had this voice in my head.
And it's funny, we talk all the time. Here's something I say often, too. We talk all the time about having a big, our disease is doing push-ups in the parking lot. It's this big, powerful disease doing push-ups. My disease is a tiny little leprechaun talking me in and out of stuff, always sort of manipulating me. What's crazy about alcoholism is it talks to you in your own voice. So that's why it's so important to be grounded, to have the sober network, to have the sponsor, to have the relationship with the higher powers.
And here's another one I like to say often, too. And it's so, so true. What's worse, drinking or being an AA and not working the steps? What's worse, drinking or being an AA and not working the steps? And if you're an alcoholic like me, neither one of those prospects are good. But it's by having this relationship with the higher powers, by working these steps, that I have that peace of mind that I said I never had.
I had that freedom from the obsession. I had that opportunity to be useful. AA didn't make me happy, it made me useful. But in turn, I became happy, you know? But the baseline is really in the usefulness. And it's all about what I do. It's not about what I think. That's so important. If you're newer in here, or even if you've been around a minute and you're having a little struggle, like, it doesn't matter what I'm thinking.
What matters is what I do. Of course, we want our thinking to start to align, but I'm saying if you've ever been in that hole, which again, if you're alcoholic like me, it happens. You just can't get out of your head. Well, it just matters what we do. And that's what that first step prayer was ingrained in me and still useful to this day. God, I'm an alcoholic and I need your help today. The first 44 pages showed me my condition, showed me my unmanageability, showed me my hole in the soul, my spiritual malady, showed me my inability to control my drinking, you know, the way obsession is.
I love the line in the big book that says, we crossed a line and we no longer had a choice. Again, I'm just sharing my experience with you. I don't wanna get in the semantics or argument with folks. I mean, who am I kidding? I probably do wanna get one, but I'm trying to be nice, right? Like, I just, I don't ever say I chose not to drink today. And again, if you say that, I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong.
Just for me, it's really a sort of a spiritual thing in the sense that, you know, in the sense that if I'm just choosing not to drink today,
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I don't really need to be here. And it's sort of humility for me to understand that when I wake up today, it's by the grace of God. When I have the opportunity to be useful to a sponsee, answer the phone, take someone through the service manual, the big book, be of service, go to the prison, whatever it is, it's because of these 12 steps. It's because of the humility I'm working towards. Maybe I found a little bit of, through my actions, AA is a program of action.
I didn't just wake up and say, I chose not to drink today. I understand if all of us jump on an airplane right now and somebody offers us a shot, we can say no, but I'm talking bigger picture here. I would not be waking up on a regular basis and saying I choose not to drink, because if I did, I would have never met any of you. I'd either still be the walking dead out there, or I'd be incarcerated or dead.
I identify with the kind of guy that not too long ago was over here at Yale New Haven Hospital, 30 something years old, job, kids, family, can't stop drinking, is being told that he needs a liver, and he's not gonna get it if he keeps drinking. They're not gonna be allowed to put him on a list but that didn't stop him, he still drank. I really believe, even though my agnosticism will tell me something different, I really believe, not that I'm special, or God came down and waved a wand so I can save the AA world but I do believe it's by God's grace that I absolutely have the opportunity to be useful today because I'm no different than that man.
There were so many times where I was told you can't have this and I still drank. We're gonna violate and I still drank. You're gonna get in trouble, I'm still drunk. My mom crying on the other side, I still drank. Even those panic attacks, as terrifying as those were, yeah, sure, it worked for a couple days, but then I was like, oh, maybe this is gone, and what do you do? You go right back to drinking.
I used to hate the spinnies all the time, too. I talk about that. There's nothing worse than the spinnies and I would swear to every God that existed that I was not gonna drink anymore, I'm not gonna drink, I can't deal with these spinnies, and the minute I threw up, what did I do? I drank again, literally, right after. So anyway, that's what I learned in those first 44 pages. I understood, I got the bedrock, I got the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous and thank God to my sponsor who took me through those first 44 pages but what was included in that was also the preface and the forwards.
And for those big book thumpers that are here, sometimes we miss the very first instructions in the big book. It's in the preface. It asks us to read a story in the back. Identification is so important. I know we wanna get on our high horses and say solution, solution, solution, but until we can catch the newcomer's ear, until we can win over that confidence, understanding that we know what it's like to not be able to drink safely, that we know what it's like to not be able to control our drinking, to obsess.
And I really liked that the instructions from the preface and reading a story in the back of the book, identifying and then going through the forwards and learning about the traditions, understanding that AA was in a ton of different countries and a ton of different languages, and that it was here, and then hearing about the story of Jack Alexander and how we grew from there and like, and all of this, all of this went under a year I'm learning about.
And I love that. And I do the same thing with my sponsees. I take them through the preface and the forwards. That's where we start. And we finish in those other chapters that sometimes big book thumpers say are useless, which I don't understand. Those later chapters after working with others are so pertinent to reinforce the first step, to look at the bigger picture of AA. Anyway, and then we got to the second step.
And this was my experience, literally going through the chapter, we agnostics. Now, it's so cool the way the steps work. I can say this now because I've been through them. But prior to that, I was pontificating a whole bunch of you know what, thinking I knew when I didn't. I mean, that's what we do. We talk a lot of crap and pretend we know, but that's what I was doing. But then when I actually went through, it was the first step that made the second step easy because our second step says come to believe in a power greater than ourself and that it can restore us to sanity.
But it was the coming to believe in the hopelessness in the first step that made it so easy to just open up to that second step. And it literally was that. And it literally was that quick for me. I went through the chapter. We Agnostics with my sponsor.
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We looked at the tools to start spiritual growth. We looked at the things that will block spiritual growth. We read a bunch of weird words, the prosaic steel girder and all these things that Bill talked about. But more importantly, we hung on to very simple words and creative intelligence and the spirit of the universe. And we looked at all those things. And it was very simple. And immediately after my second step, I felt like I was willing to believe in a power greater than myself.
And I got a prayer for that one, too. God, please, please. I'm sorry. I ask for your protection and care as I let go of old ways and old ideas just for today. And my sponsor used to tell me, you need to let go of all ideas, even the good ones. And he was he was so right, because I always had good ideas and I needed to let go of them. Another gem he told me in the second step was not that we're willing to believe in a power greater than ourself, but we have to believe that that power can restore us to sanity.
And that made sense to me. Sometimes we shield each other and, you know, again, you just do it however you do it. I have no, you know, all of AA is good. But like for me, I really appreciate the direct, you can never safely drink again. Nobody's asking me to just automatically accept I'm never going to drink again, but I still needed to understand that I could never safely drink alcohol again. As terrifying as that was, I needed that to help me get to where I needed to get to.
I didn't need anyone to sort of, you know, tap me on the head and love me to the grave. I needed that, you know, that direct communication. Then we got on our hands and knees and took a third step. And that was a big deal for me because there was no sort of touching except for, you know, one night stands and stuff. I mean, I'm just just being honest. Like there was there was no touching. There was no like, you know, hugs and handshakes and this sort of stuff.
Like it's just but to get on my hands with another man and say the third step and to be asked to be relieved from the bondage itself. And something I learned years later, I didn't know at the time of my third step, but something I learned years later and it clicked and someone said it somewhere at a service event I was at and it really clicked. You know, we we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care.
To the care of God, and that really helped me understand. That it was about letting go of results. A lot of the time we tell other members to just turn it over to God and then we forget our responsibility. I understand the third step is I need to take action. I need to start writing my fourth step. I need to continue to pray. I need to continue to do the things I've learned and then leave that in the hands of a higher power, but not to just turn it over and sit on the couch and say, where's my job, God? Why don't you go ahead and change that light for me?
So I can get to the DMV on time. I finally got my license. I need it renewed, sir. What's going on here? And because if somebody didn't tell me that, that's what I would have done with God. The same thing I did with every human being after I was rescuing animals and feeding dogs because it all revolved around me and I always demanded more than my fair share. And real or imagined in my head, I was the victim and the hero of every story.
And you guys owed me because look at what I grew up with and look at what I needed to survive. You owed me such crap. Great pretender. Listen, it was a hard childhood, but you didn't owe me anything. I needed to take responsibility. And that's what I learned in that third step, relieve me of the bondage of self, like again, a lot of the words in the third step when I first took it, let's be honest, I didn't even understand what they meant, but I did understand, relieve me from the bondage of self because that's all I ever did.
And as scary as prison was and as much as I hated having panic attacks and being behind bars, being stuck in self is the worst. Nothing matters but me, it's just a lonely existence. So I started writing a fourth step and I got some some sheets which allowed me to look at my resentments. Everything is directed out of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Some people say four columns with an X or some people say five columns.
The bottom line is I went through the columns. I looked at who I was angry at people, principal institutions or animals. That's just something I did. I looked at what the cause of the anger was. I looked at the seven areas of self, how did affect my my ambitions, my pocketbook, my self-esteem, my security, my pride, personal relationships, sexual relationships. Then I looked at where I was selfish, self-seeking, dishonest and frightened for every single one. Selfish, self-seeking, dishonest and frightened, selfish, self-seeking, dishonest and frightened. And I went through I had four legal pads of resentments.
[00:35:03]
I was mad at everybody. I was mad at the New York City school system. I was mad at bottled water. I was mad at my father. I was mad at neighbors. I was mad at people that looked at me wrong at the grocery store. I saw like resentments do have the power to kill because on my list there was things that weren't even true. I wrote it down that it was true. But after having the fist stab, it wasn't true.
You know what I mean? But but in my head, it was true. Just so crazy, real or imagined, we have we have to do something about them. And and, you know, so that's what I did. I looked at my patterns and. You know, I didn't know how to have win win interdependent relationships, everything was, you know, about me, bottom line. Then I also looked at, well, with the resentment, I did the. My version of the resentment prayer, which you'll find in into action, I'm sorry, and how it works, and I, you know, I sort of adjusted it to, you know, asking God to soften my heart, show me where I could be helpful, help me see how I was like this person.
It was really important for me to see how I could behave just like the person I was angry at for years. I was so mad at my father, but the truth was I became worse than he was. But I needed to be able to do that force that to see that. And then I looked at fear. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of making friends, not making friends. I was afraid of having a job, not having a job. I was afraid of having money, not having money.
So basically, what was I was paralyzed and I followed the formula. I wrote down my fear. I wrote down what caused the fear. I wrote down how I set the ball rolling, how self-reliance failed me. And then I asked God to remove my fear and direct my thinking to blank, depending on which one of these fears were. And I started to open up to the possibilities of being proactive, responsible, useful, communicative, like I was creating ideals as I was writing these things.
Like I said before, I had like four legal pads of resentments and I had not just not just as many, but definitely a ton of fears. I'm so grateful the amount of effort I spent on that four step because as as tedious as it was, as painful as it was, as gut wrenching it was, it was so necessary and so useful. And look, that's the fact. If we want to get better, we've got to do work. A.A. is action. It's transactional.
Do you do this? You get that. You know, we can't sit around thinking about getting well because before you know it, we'll have the drink in the hand. So, you know, I also looked at my my my sexual conduct, which basically I used people, that's what I did, and I created some ideals. I didn't write things that you needed to do. I wrote things that I needed to do. And it was amazing when I started living up to these ideals that I created and I asked God for the power to shape and mold them and I asked God for the power to live up to them. All of a sudden I was attracting different people.
You know, I wasn't I wasn't attracting the same people I was before. I mean, that's a whole that's a whole another workshop for another time. But, you know, healthy relationships are important. They're 1000 percent important, especially in relation to sobriety and how we give back and how we make amends and blah, blah, blah. But this was the blueprint. So all of this work was what was going to bring me to the, you know, we say all the time in a let go, let go, let go, let go and let God.
And for me, that's the same thing as telling me to stop drinking. It's useless. I don't let go until I make amends, just like I don't stop drinking until I go through the steps. So I don't just wake up and let go like it doesn't work that way for me. I have to I have to take some action in order to let go. And 90 percent of the time that action is making things right or owning my side of the street or taking responsibility for something, whether it's personal, my eating habits, sleeping habits, whatever, you know, harm I've caused.
Um. You know, and so I had all of this compiled along with, you know, harms I've done and I sat with my sponsor and he spent a long time with me on my fifth step, and I'm grateful for the amount of time he spent with me, which is why I never say no today. And I spent as much time as I need. I'll never forget. They had a surprise birthday party for me. I had scheduled three sponsors. They were in the garage. We were going to go through their fifth step, I mean, separately, but I didn't know they were part of like the party or whatever.
And everybody's like, all right, man, you know, surprise. Happy 30th. And I'm like, no, no, no. You don't understand. Like, I got some fifth steps I got to do. I guess I don't have time for this party, you know. And, you know, maybe that was radical, you know, maybe maybe it wasn't. But but I'm just saying. This is I definitely don't want to be perceived as radical, but to me, wanting to
[00:40:01]
live free is not radical, you know, and those people had made time with me and we needed to get through that fifth step. And thank God for my supportive friends and family. We found a way to sort of do both. And it worked out well. But, you know, but but again, I wouldn't be open minded to that if my sponsor didn't spend so much time with me. I would have sort of a different set of values. I would be like, well, let's get to the fifth step when it works for me.
Let's get to the fifth step when my son's behaving. Let's get to the fifth step when my dog doesn't need to go out like I would have all these excuses versus like, let's go ahead and, you know, move forward here. And. Just thank God from the bottom of my heart that I got to know him better and I ask God, please show me what I'm hiding, because that's what I'm so good at. I'm so good at hiding. I mean, we all are in the early chapters.
We went through the pages and and in the early days, my my sponsor asked me if I had any reservations. And at that time, my reservations were like, you know, if my mom died or if I lost my leg or, you know, whatever, silly fast forward to someone who's been in a for a while and I'll sponsor people that have been around for a while. And we'll get to that part of the book where it talks about reservations and I'll ask a sponsor and I need to take this same advice.
But do you have any reservations? And of course, the guy who's been around 20 years now, I don't have any reservations. I'm involved in service. I just wanted a new sponsor. I just want a new experience. So that my answer, my question is, where's your eight step list? Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I got a step list. Well, how many names you got on there is probably 20 or 30. Well, those are your reservations, sir.
Why do you still have 20 or 30 names just sitting there? And this is the next stage, the next phase of the development. Listen, I know there's some names on there. You couldn't find someone, blah, blah, blah. Like, I get it. But but I mean, we have to do something about it. We don't just throw it in the drawer and we'll get to it at some point. I'm a good guy now. Look at my bank account. Everybody likes me at work.
You know, I got a boyfriend, blah, blah, blah. Like like we need to do something about it. I need to do something about it. And even when I couldn't find anyone, I I found a reason like a treatment center is those people weren't working there anymore that I harmed. So I got involved. The treatment clinic carried the message. There was a girl in high school who I heard couldn't find or didn't know her name.
So I brought a case of big books to a woman's shelter like we we find ways to make things right even when we can't find people. And now it's on their terms, but we still make the effort. Anyways, the sixth step for me. Is I ask God to help me be willing to let go of the things to which I still cling. So I the paragraphs are so small because all the work was done previous. To ask for what I let go of to what I still cling, but I still cling to greed, I still cling to lust, still cling to anger.
So that's what I'm asking for. I'm asking for the willingness to let that go and willingness. Sometimes in a we think it's a thought. Willingness is an action word. I'm going to give you a very simple example. You want to know how, you know, I'm willing to share my experience tonight because I'm here. You want to know how my sponsor is willing to get well because she called me like so willing is an action word.
It's not just, you know, because I used to tell people I was willing to get on. I was willing to get a job, but I'd just be sitting on the couch. No, no, I'm willing. No, no, I do. I want one. No, I absolutely want one. What do you mean, Tommy? I want one. Yeah, but what did you do? Seven step prayer for me, I won't recite it, but what it really is for me, based on my experience now is a summary of asking for the strength to do the eighth and ninth step, giving all of myself to God after this is what we have seen.
The amen comes at the seventh step, not the third step. And then I'm asking basically for the power to go make this amends list and go out and make these amends. And, you know, I wrote it. I wrote a long eight step list because, you know, my fourth step was long and I asked God to help me clear away the debris of self-will and self-reliant living. That will be done for me as well as for others and put stuff on a note card.
And I looked at the harms that I cause and I wrote down what I was willing to do to make it right. And then I started to ask God for the for the power to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences and went out and start making amends and running on low on time here. But as you can imagine, I've made many amends and there's there's still some I had to made and there's some I've had to clean up and yada yada.
But that that was the bottom line of when I started to be a different person. Like all of that work previous was was valid. I did it. People worked with me. I did it, people worked with me, but the real change came when we started into the amends. Not before that.
[00:45:01]
And the Ten Step just keeps me, my side of the street clean and gives me a formula to ask God all day, every day, to take away these things, whether it be selfishness, fear, dishonesty and you know, the more I grow spiritually, the more I see how selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened I am. I mean, I'm not robbing safes today or getting into fistfights and stuff, but I'm, it's still my makeup.
Sometimes our ego is so big, we're around for 20 years and we're afraid to say that we're still an alcoholic or afraid to say that we have ego or we're dishonest because we're afraid someone might think that we're not working the program. I'm only afraid when I'm not working the program to say that. But what's scary is imagine me, hopefully I will never get there, but imagine me being afraid to admit I need to take a drink.
I mean, that's the whole reason we're here. Hopefully if I'm working this program, I would never get there. But the ego gets so big that I can't say, I can't say that I'm selfish today. I think about myself all day. I tell people all the time, I talk to God 400 times a day, 400 times a day, easy. I don't count, but I know it's more than that. It is. But that's not a lot. I'm not pounding my chest and telling you how spiritually fit I am.
I think of myself a million times a day, easy, 400 is nothing. So I have to do this if I want to be connected, if I want to be right sized, and that's what these steps allow me to do. And when I was in early sobriety, I didn't even think there would be time to cut my nails. I literally, because that's all I did was drink. There was no time to cut my nails. So I literally thought there'd be no time to cut my nails.
Today, I'm busy beyond belief with my own business, with AA service, with sponsees, with the family, with the dogs, with the house, everything. Such a full life. And there's still time for more. There's still time for more because of the 12 steps. Because I'm no longer trapped inside myself and I have peace of mind. It changes everything when you're not chasing around a person, a place, an idea, or alcohol.
You don't realize how much time it takes to try to control and manage and manipulate all that. But when we're free from all that, we have all the time in the world. All the time in the world. 11 step is my favorite. Try to go here. I know we're ending up here, Ramona, but I love the process and I don't think we talk about it enough. I'm not saying we don't do it. That's for you to know if you do it, but we don't talk about it enough.
I love the process of reviewing my day on page 86. Where am I selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Sort of tightening up any amends I've need to make, checking out where my 10 step is. Do I owe an apology? What corrective measures do I need to take? Was I kind and loving? Looking at all of that and reflecting and being quiet and being at peace and asking God for forgiveness and then asking for corrective measures to be better the next day and then writing them down on a note card and getting up in the morning and asking God for the power to do these things I learned about the night before.
Immaculate formula. Work in my first nine, living in 10 during the day, reflecting on 11, coming up with a note card, asking for the power to do better. And then each day I grow just a little bit. And then we do what Dr. Bob said. We carry the message and sometimes use words and I have one less sponsor than I need and I carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous via the big book, the service manual, A Comes of Age, the whole package.
Do what I can as much as I can. And I just plug in here, man, before I end, I'll pass the mic back to Ramona, but it's just Alcoholics Anonymous service inside the group and outside the group is so relevant, so necessary for the future of AA for us to thrive, not just survive. We all have an opportunity to make sure AA's here for the next and I just, I can't fathom not being involved in my home group or in the service structure and saying that I'm free and I'm sober today.
It just doesn't make sense. And I've lost a child in sobriety, I've had to take care of my mom dying of cancer, I've moved. There's no reason I can't give time. Absolutely no reason. I'm nothing without Alcoholics Anonymous. And I just, I really can't fathom why I would not want to give time. But I appreciate the opportunity to share. I hope that was useful to some and thank you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight where you never know what you're going to get.
You will just have to keep coming back. We surely hope to see you next week right here, same time, same station. Our special guest is Scott Jay from Aurora, Minnesota, another past delegate. And he's really, really awesome.
[00:50:02]
So I hope that you'll come. Everyone is invited to hang out with us afterwards in the meeting after the meeting on the back porch. Now, we're in the South, we like to have meetings on the back porch. Craig, thank you. Ramona, do you have any closing comments and would you lead us out with a prayer of your choice? Yeah, sure. Ramona, I don't have any closing comments, but I'll lead us out if that's okay.
We can have a moment of silence for the alcoholic inside and outside these squares with reservations. And if you'd like to join me in the serenity prayer, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Okay, everybody should be able to scream and holler at him. Thank you, Craig. That was awesome. Thank you, Craig.
Thank you so much.