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Sober Talk SA - Sage · Sober Talk SA

0:00
Welcome to Sober Talk. I'm Dennis and I'm an alcoholic.
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Soap dear. Thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol, please
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call Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 double 22222.
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I'll visit their website ata.org dot AU.
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I'll just run through the preamble of Alcoholics
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Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a
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fellowship of people who share the experience, strengthen hope
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with each other that they may solve their common problems, and
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help with us to recover from alcoholism.
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The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop
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drinking and no dues of fees. Fair membership.
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We are self supporting through our own contributions.
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He is not alive with any sect, denomination, politics,
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organization or institution, does not wish to engage in any
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controversy, neither endorses or oppose any causes.
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Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help.
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Other Alcoholics are chiefs of Brady.
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Hi everyone, I'm sage. I'm alcoholic.
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My pronouns are they them? Thank you so much for the group
1:14
for asking me to be here tonight.
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And I just want to start by saying happy birthday, Ryan. 12
1:19
months is absolutely amazing. I've only had a couple of
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conversations with you, but in those chats I've just really,
1:25
really connected and related to, to the way that you're feeling
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and the way that you're healing and your recovery.
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And I just keep coming back, man, because I promise you that
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the miracle, it will happen and it's happening.
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So yeah. So I, I love this meeting.
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In my early recovery, I did not because I came into a a very
1:44
staunch atheist. I really hated the G word and I
1:50
was grateful that my very first meeting there was an atheist
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there who was 20 years sober and said that he was still atheist
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and that I could get sober in AI without ever having to do the
1:59
God stuff. And I don't think I ever would
2:01
have come back if it wasn't for that man.
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So I'm very, very grateful for the people who come into a a as
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an atheist and they stay atheist because I would never have come
2:10
back if it weren't for those people.
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But as you hear through my story, I, yeah, I was going
2:16
crazy, but basically believing that I was God, that I was this
2:20
all powerful being. And so I eventually came to have
2:24
a willingness to, I was about to say, try the spiritual side of
2:28
this program, but the whole thing is spiritual.
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So it was very challenging for me when I was resisting any
2:36
spiritual elements. But yeah, so I came into a A
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really not thinking that I was an alcoholic.
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I did an online quiz that told me I had severe alcohol
2:45
dependence disorder, but I wasn't, I will say I wasn't
2:49
physically dependent on alcohol. I wasn't drinking every day.
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I wasn't drinking in the mornings.
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I wasn't getting the DTS. I knew that I was definitely
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like emotionally, socially, like mentally in every way dependent
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on alcohol for the way I navigated life.
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But I, I was sort of, I say just a binge drinker.
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So when I drank, I drank, but it wasn't every day.
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And I think that was part of what this illusion that I wasn't
3:15
really an alcoholic, you know, and, but I came into AI so
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surprised by how much I related to everyone.
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You know, I I related so much to the emotions, the, you know, the
3:27
stuff of like as a child, I felt so separate, different and
3:30
alone. You know, like everybody got the
3:31
rule book to life and I missed out that day.
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And, and yeah, I just, I was always so full of fear, so
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overthinking every situation in my life, replaying every
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interaction or every time someone hurt me or, you know,
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like I was just, my head was so loud always my whole life.
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And, and I found alcohol and that was just like, yeah, the,
3:55
the magic. I found the thing and I was
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like, oh, Oh my God, I'm alive. It's OK.
4:00
I can do this. Like I can do this human
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experience. And but, yeah, it wasn't like my
4:06
first drink. I was like, very, yeah, I binge
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drank straight away. And it was like that every time
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I drank, but it wasn't often. I was 13 the first time I drank
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and got drunk and thought I'd managed to hide that from my
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dad. Like, that I, you know, didn't
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look drunk, which is ridiculous. I definitely did.
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But yeah, so like, throughout my adolescence, I didn't realize.
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But yeah, alcohol was the only time I ever felt OK.
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It was the only time that I ever had peace between my ears and
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and obviously this is a progressive disease.
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So as the years went on, you know that saying at first it was
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fun and then it was fun with consequences, and then it was
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just consequences. And the difficult thing with
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alcoholism is that that the insanity of this disease, right,
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is that we don't see the that progression there when it goes
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from being fun with consequences to just consequences.
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And I, yeah, so I first came to a A because my drinking was
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really starting to impact work. And I really, the job that I had
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was the first time I'd ever felt any sense of purpose in the
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world. You know, like prior to that I'd
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been chronically. I just, I've always been very
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unmanageable. I had over like 20 or 30 jobs in
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and out of like Centrelink unemployed, like have a job for
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like 3 months. And then I tried going to
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school, Ian and like just, it was all over the place.
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I couldn't, I just couldn't apply myself to anything.
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But somehow I'd found myself in this job where for the first
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time in my life, they saw something in me and, and I felt
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like I had a place where I belonged and I was appreciated.
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But yeah, my drinking was starting to impact that.
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And so I went to AI to prove to my boss that, you know, I was
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going to get this on track. But at no point did I actually
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think I was going to stop drinking.
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I, I thought I would come to AI and learn how to drink without
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consequences, that you would teach me how to drink properly.
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And so I was quite shocked at my first meeting when I learned
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that it was a program of abstinence.
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And somebody said, yeah, at that first meeting as well.
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We suggest 90 meetings and 90 days.
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And I was like, I'll do one a week, I'll be fine, thanks.
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So obviously, like I just had in my head that I was smarter than
6:19
everyone and I was gonna like, I'd be fine.
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And, you know, and I definitely thought that like everyone in AI
6:24
was a little bit brainwashed and that it was a bit of a cult.
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And one of the favorite things I've heard about that
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misconception that I is a cult is that cults normally target
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people who've got money, which I thought was very funny.
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And I also love the saying, you know, about, about it being
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brainwashing when my brain needed a bit of a wash, you
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know, like I was not doing really good.
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Like the the way the decisions that I was making in life, they
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were not producing very good outcomes.
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And I couldn't say that so but yeah, I so I wasn't ready when I
6:59
first came here. And I was in and out for a bit
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and and in that time, my rock bottom got lower and lower.
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But I kept coming back, you know, because I was told that I
7:06
was welcome here even if I didn't ever want to do the good
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stuff. And and I was told that I was
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welcome here even if I drank again.
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People just said to me, keep coming back no matter what.
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And the first time I came back after a relapse was really
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scary. I did have this like massive
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fear that I was going to be judged and, you know, because
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it's a program of abstinence and I'd failed at the abstinence
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thing. So I thought I was going to come
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back and you're all going to yell at me and, and I'd be in
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the naughty corner. But it just wasn't like that at
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all. Like I came back and I was met
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with so much love and joy and everyone was so happy to see me
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and I didn't understand it. I almost even didn't even trust
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it, you know, because I just don't think there's anything in
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the world where people don't want something from you.
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You know that everything else I'd experienced in the world is
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people wanted something from me that there's that kind of
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kindness had conditions attached to it.
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And so I was a bit mistrusting, but all I knew was that I
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related to the the stories in here.
8:01
I related to the way people were feeling and something in me felt
8:05
better when I would come back to a a after hitting a new rock
8:08
bottom. There was like this sense of
8:10
relief. And but for me, what was
8:13
happening is that, like when I put down and drink externally,
8:16
things get good really, really quickly.
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Like, I'm not spending all my money on alcohol and I'm not
8:20
hungover at work and I'm not, you know, sleeping with people I
8:23
shouldn't be sleeping with and I'm not spending money that I
8:26
don't have. The external stuff got good
8:29
very, very quickly. But internally, the further I
8:32
got from a drink, the more restless and irritable and
8:35
discontent that I got, and the more my head would convince me
8:38
that I was making a big deal out of nothing and it wasn't really
8:41
that bad. And that'd be fine if I drank
8:44
again. And.
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And yeah, I think the thing that I really struggled with was the
8:50
powerlessness. I could see the unmanageability.
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Like, that was very clear. I was unmanageable from the day
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I climbed out of my mother. But I couldn't say that I was
8:59
powerless over alcohol because I didn't understand how you could
9:02
be powerless over something you like doing.
9:04
Like, I loved drinking. I just didn't love the
9:06
consequences that came with it. And I guess I thought that I
9:09
could stop if I wanted to, but I didn't want to, you know?
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And so that was. Yeah, for two years, I'd get a
9:15
little bit time up, and then I'd get restless, irritable,
9:18
discontent, and I'd pick up a drink again.
9:20
And every time that happened, I thought that I was making the
9:23
choice to drink because there's a little voice in my head when I
9:26
get restless, irritable and discontent, that voice says that
9:28
a drink will fix this, A drink is a good idea.
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A drink will make this feeling go away.
9:34
And because that voice sounds like my voice, I thought, I want
9:38
to drink. That makes sense, right?
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My head is saying I want to drink.
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That means I want to drink. So I just couldn't say that I
9:46
was powerless over that pattern. I really thought I was choosing
9:49
to drink every time. But as I said, progressive
9:51
disease, my rock bottom got lower and lower and my line in
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the sand started to shift. And the situations that I was
9:58
getting into were further and further away from this moral
10:02
code that I thought I had. You know, I thought of myself as
10:04
this person with great values and morals, but yeah, I was
10:08
starting to lie. Yeah, lying a lot more.
10:13
Lying about why I was borrowing money.
10:16
Yeah, just calling in to sick to work all the time.
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I ended up also, I lost my license and I managed to
10:21
convince myself that that wasn't drink driving because it was the
10:23
morning after and I was on my pays at the time, which means
10:28
that your blood alcohol level has to be 0.
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Mine was 0.025, which would have been half the legal limit had I
10:34
had my full license. But I did not have my full
10:36
license, so I was drink driving, but my head was like, well, that
10:40
doesn't count, you know, like it's half the legal limit.
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So my legal limit was 0. But so that sort of stuff, that
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sort of rationalizing, that was justifying why the situations I
10:51
was getting into weren't too bad.
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And, you know, this was in my, it's getting into my late 20s
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now. And that's the sort of
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situations that I was getting into might have been cute in my
11:00
early 20s, but it certainly wasn't cute anymore.
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Yeah. And so I, I moved to Melbourne,
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I was still working for that same company because they opened
11:10
up an office over there. And I like, within a few weeks
11:16
of moving there, I was drinking again.
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And so I was in and out of a a in Melbourne.
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And, and then I asked somebody to sponsor me.
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And one of my, I think it was after the losing my license
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incident, I went back to AI and I found someone I really related
11:28
to and I asked them to sponsor me.
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And she said yes. And that was amazing.
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But then I just like disappeared.
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I was like, I was back out there again.
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It's funny, I actually ran onto her.
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I ran into her on the train in that time where I'd, like,
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disappeared. And she was like, hi.
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And I was like, oh, my God, don't look at me, you know?
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So the universe was giving me these little signs of where I
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needed to be. I reckon when I saw her on the
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train, I was on the way to a party.
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Yeah. But I just.
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Yeah, in and out, in and out. But then COVID hit, so I was
12:03
living in a chair house full of people who were working in
12:05
hospital, in the arts, and they all lost their jobs.
12:08
And the house that I was living in very quickly became party
12:10
house. And I just had this knowing, you
12:13
know, I'd been to enough AA. My drinking had not been every
12:17
day. Yeah, I had never been a daily
12:19
drinker, but I just saw that if I was going to start drinking in
12:23
this in the lockdowns in Melbourne was so severe.
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I just had this knowing that I was in a lot of trouble.
12:28
So I called Kate, the lady who had asked to sponsor me and I
12:30
said, Kate, I think I'm in a bit of trouble here.
12:33
I don't know what to do. And I was crying and.
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And she said, yeah, yeah. It's like she, I think she knew
12:42
that I I had some more pain that I had to go through.
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So within four days of that lockdown, I was drinking.
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And yeah. And that's when it became around
12:51
the clock and it. Yeah, those were like the
12:54
darkest, the drink, the drinking wasn't working anymore.
12:58
There was no relief. You know, I, I drank for relief.
13:00
That was the reason that I drank was for relief from my head,
13:04
from my emotions, from, you know, whatever.
13:06
Every time I picked up a drink, it was for relief and it wasn't
13:09
working anymore. And, you know, I was crawling
13:12
out of bed. I would, I would wake up at 9:00
13:15
and I would log on to my work computer and I would turn the
13:18
volume all the way up so that if I got I'd go back to sleep.
13:20
And then if I got an e-mail, it would wake me up and I could,
13:22
like, pretend that I had been at my desk and reply to the e-mail
13:25
and then go back to sleep so that my work didn't know.
13:29
And then about 1:00 in the afternoon, I would get up and
13:31
start drinking and and, you know, put in a few actual hours
13:34
of work. And, yeah, that didn't last very
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long. I knew that I was going to lose
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my job. And that, as I said, that job is
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like the only thing that really I just knew.
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If I lost that job, I don't think I ever would have been
13:47
able to let go of my victim narrative.
13:48
I think that that would have been the ultimate nail in the
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coffin of the. You would drink if you had a
13:53
life like mine, stuff like I just.
13:55
I don't know that I ever would have come back from that place.
13:57
So I think that the universe was really looking after me in that.
13:59
And I had this, yeah, this moment, this crack in this just
14:07
crack in my soul, I guess where I had seen that every decision I
14:12
was making, which was for relief, was producing a
14:15
different outcome than what I was looking for.
14:17
You know, I, yeah, I every decision was trying to make my
14:23
discomfort go away. And my life was so profoundly
14:26
uncomfortable. So I had to say, yeah, I had
14:29
that moment of saying that there was this real disconnect between
14:31
the decisions I was making and the outcomes that I was getting.
14:33
And maybe my best thinking wasn't very good.
14:36
And, and thank thankfully, I've been to enough a A to say that
14:40
you all were not miserable like I was.
14:42
And if I was so smart and if I was above this brainwashed coat,
14:47
then why am I miserable? And you're not, You know, it was
14:50
just, yeah, I just had this moment of being really willing
14:53
to give it a go. I'd never ever given anything in
14:56
my life ago. And so I decided I was going to
14:58
do this little 12 month experiment and and just do every
15:02
suggested thing in a A for 12 months.
15:04
I was do it all. And I kind of thought that I
15:07
would get to the end of that 12 months and it wouldn't have
15:09
worked. And then I could say I tried and
15:12
then I could kind of drink with impunity.
15:14
But obviously the suggested things in AI suggested for a
15:18
reason. And yeah, so I, I moved back to
15:23
Adelaide. I knew I couldn't stay in that
15:25
place in Melbourne. I moved back to Adelaide.
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I drank through my two weeks of, of the quarantine and, and I
15:30
finally jumped in. I got a Home group, I got a
15:32
sponsor. I finally did the 90 meetings in
15:34
90 days, which I scoffed that at first, started working the steps
15:39
and my life started to transform.
15:42
Yeah, all of my interpersonal staff, like the I was a manager
15:47
at the job that I was working at, and Oh my gosh, the tensions
15:51
that I had with my team were so intense, but I was suddenly
15:56
getting these tools to be able to work through them.
15:58
I remember the first amends I ever had to make.
16:01
I was not on step 9 yet, but my sponsor guided me to make an
16:05
amends for something that happened in the workplace
16:06
because one of my staff was yelling at me.
16:10
This very tall man was yelling at me and I felt very
16:12
threatened. And I said to him, do your
16:16
effing job, it's not that hard. And he said that's
16:19
unprofessional, you can't say that.
16:21
And he stormed out and I stormed out and I called my sponsor
16:25
like, Oh my God, he was yelling at me.
16:28
He said this and she said to me, you owe an amends.
16:33
And I said what? I said, what do you mean?
16:36
He was yelling at me and I'm his superior and he was
16:39
disrespecting me. And she's like, yeah, I'm really
16:42
sorry say to you. Oh, and a man's there.
16:44
And I was so angry, but I just, like, took the time to calm down
16:48
and called her back. And I said, what do you need me
16:52
to do? And her guidance was that the
16:53
next day I needed to go in and ask him to come into the meeting
16:57
room with me and just apologize and say, you're right.
17:00
That was really unprofessional of me.
17:02
I shouldn't have sworn that's not how I want to conduct
17:04
myself. And I'm sorry and to leave it
17:06
there to not say, but you can't yell at me.
17:09
I'm your boss. But because that's what my
17:12
apologies were like before recovery, it was all like, you
17:14
know, I'm sorry I swore, but your behaviour was blah, blah,
17:17
blah, blah, blah. She said to own my part in it
17:20
and then pause, just apologize, clean my side of the street and
17:24
then pause. And something absolutely
17:27
indescribable happened because this man then apologized to me.
17:31
And that never, ever, ever would have happened had I gone in
17:34
there with the I'm sorry, but but when I cleaned my side of
17:37
the street, I said, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have sworn you were
17:40
right. That was unprofessional.
17:42
And I paused and he said, yeah, I'm really sorry too.
17:44
That was that got really out of hand.
17:47
And I just was blown away. I was like, Oh my God, this
17:49
program. What is this witchcraft?
17:54
It was amazing. It was like my first really
17:56
visceral experience of light, you know, the things that could
18:00
happen if I would have put this program in my life.
18:03
But yeah, the one thing I was still refusing to do was the God
18:06
stuff. I was absolutely refusing to
18:09
have a bar of it. I said I was going to, I wasn't
18:11
even going to have any spiritual.
18:13
I made a, a my higher power. That was the, and it even says
18:16
in our literature that you can do that, you know, and I was, I
18:19
have autism and I'm very like literal in my brain.
18:22
And I is by definition a power greater than me because it would
18:25
still be here if I weren't. And so I could get around that,
18:28
right? If I were to hand my will in my
18:30
life over to AI that that my life would change.
18:34
And I was getting evidence of that, like that situation in the
18:37
workplace. But the problem when I thought I
18:40
thought I was the one keeping me sober, I thought I was making
18:43
the choice every day not to drink.
18:46
And I was 4 1/2 months, I was still doing a meeting every day.
18:49
I was working full time. I was in my Step 4.
18:52
And I was more restless, irritable and discontent than I
18:55
have ever been in my whole life because I no longer had the
18:59
thing that made me feel OK in the world, you know?
19:01
And I could see, I could see that this was good.
19:05
I could see on paper that my life was better when I didn't
19:07
drink and my life was better when I put these principles into
19:09
action. But that just felt so unfair.
19:12
And I had this big chip on my shoulder that a, a was like
19:14
total abstinence. I was like, why can't I just
19:16
sometimes drink? It's not fair.
19:18
Like, and you know, the company that I was working for, we
19:21
closed down every two weeks over Christmas.
19:23
And I had this brilliant idea. And there's nothing worse than
19:26
an alcoholic with a good idea. But I just thought I'd crack the
19:30
code. I was gonna drink for two weeks
19:32
every year and that would be fine, you know, And I either
19:36
thought I was going to come back and not tell anyone, which is
19:39
ridiculous because I'm a terrible liar, or I thought that
19:43
that actually would be fine and I could just keep progressing
19:45
through my steps and like being of service and everything would
19:48
be fine. I could keep spiritually growing
19:50
because I could see that stuff work.
19:52
But I would just get my little like 2 weeks of oblivion every
19:54
year. So right before Christmas, I
19:58
picked up a drink and yeah, I drank for three days and.
20:04
Christmas Eve is the big celebration in my family.
20:06
So Christmas Eve was just, yeah, that was a massive, massive
20:09
night. I woke up on Christmas Day with
20:10
the worst hangover of my life, and I tried so hard to keep it
20:15
going. My family was all about white
20:16
wine on Christmas. And I had one sip of wine and I
20:19
just could not get it down. And I just, something in me knew
20:22
that it was over. I had this like, yeah, I guess
20:26
this surrender and and I called Kate and I said I stuffed up and
20:32
she said, I think we could say that was coming.
20:35
And could you just be willing to be willing to be willing to pray
20:38
to something? She said, I don't care if it's a
20:40
chair, can you just try prayer? And I realized that, you know, I
20:46
said I was going to try all the suggested things.
20:48
I said I was going to do this 12 month experiment and I was going
20:50
to do all the suggested things and I would not be able to get
20:54
to the end of that experiment and say that I'd really tried
20:57
unless I put prayer in there as well.
20:59
I had to, I had to give that a go.
21:02
And, and she gave me this little prayer to say whenever the
21:05
obsession was on me, whenever the rat in my brain was saying
21:08
that a drink was a good idea, instead of trying to wrestle
21:11
with it because that's what I was doing when I was running on
21:13
my own willpower. I was trying to convince myself
21:16
whenever the disease was allowed, I was trying to
21:18
convince myself why I shouldn't drink, right?
21:20
Like the disease would be like, have a drink.
21:22
And I'd be like, no, but I'm in recovery.
21:25
And I'd be like, I really wish I could drink, but I can't.
21:27
I really wish I could drink. But I'm going to work the steps,
21:30
you know? So I'm in this like tug of war.
21:32
And she gave me this little prayer to circuit break that tug
21:35
of war so that I'm no longer getting in the argument with my
21:37
disease. And that prayer was so simple.
21:39
It's just I'm powerless. Please help me stay sober.
21:41
So every time the disease was like, have a drink.
21:45
I wouldn't argue with that. I'd just say I'm powerless,
21:47
please help me stay sober. And I'm sorry I got a bit
21:50
emotional when I think about it because I'd have to say it 1000
21:53
times a day, you know? But I was no longer, I was no
21:57
longer trying to convince myself and I didn't know what I was
22:00
asking help from. I definitely didn't want a
22:03
religious God. I guess I kind of was trying to
22:06
conceptualize the universe. Actually, my first sponsor gave
22:09
me some really fun homework to try and get to know a higher
22:11
power. She was like, write, write a
22:13
list of everything that you want your higher power to be and
22:16
write a list of everything you don't want it to be.
22:18
Now that list that you don't want it to be.
22:19
It's not that that's not your God to a big circle around what
22:23
you want your higher power to be.
22:24
That's your God that you get to make up your own God in a A.
22:28
And I just, I really enjoyed that.
22:30
She's like, go write some poems, do a collage, like, you know, go
22:33
stand in the ocean, whatever it is you need to do, just go make
22:36
up a God that you can say this little prayer to.
22:40
And so I decided to get curious with that.
22:42
And that meant I decided to start coming to this meeting
22:44
because I really wanted, yeah, I just really wanted to, to do all
22:49
those suggested things, right. I really wanted to give it a go
22:51
and to be open minded. And I really loved actually
22:55
it's, it's weird, but I really loved how uncomfortable this
22:57
meeting made me, how I was like, I just remember how gross I felt
23:03
hearing the Saint Francis prayer being read out.
23:05
I was like, oh, but I was like trying to be curious about that,
23:09
right? Like to meet that feeling with a
23:11
sense of curiosity rather than judgment and trying really hard
23:15
not to judge the people who that stuff worked for and not to
23:18
judge myself and just just be curious.
23:21
And, and yeah. And so my, that I reset my 12
23:24
month experiment. I said, right, I'm going to
23:26
start again, but I'm going to do the prayer a bit too.
23:29
And yeah, it's been over five years now that I have not had to
23:33
have a drink or a drug. And the first year was still
23:36
really hard. The obsession was still on me.
23:38
Like I said, I had to use that prayer like 1000 times a day.
23:42
But life was changing, right? Like the I went, my sponsor took
23:45
me back to step one, which also made me really angry because I
23:48
just wanted to keep going and like tick the boxes.
23:50
And I was in my Step 4 and I was like, no, can't we just like.
23:53
And she was like, if there was, you know, if you've drunk again,
23:55
there's something in step one that we need to go back and
23:58
revisit Step 1. So let's start from the
24:00
beginning again. And she was absolutely right.
24:02
Because reading through those chapters with the experience of
24:07
that relapse, I was just reading them in such a different light.
24:10
And for the first time, I was actually like able to find
24:13
something in Bill's story that I related to The first time I was
24:17
reading it, I was like, I don't care about your goal fever and
24:19
your impeccable coach of 10. I just didn't relate to this
24:23
like, man. And I didn't, yeah.
24:25
I just, all I could say in the book was the stuff that I didn't
24:27
like and that I didn't relate to.
24:29
But after that relapse, I just had really a really different
24:33
lens on, on the book. And yeah, I, but it was a
24:38
really, it was a massive struggle.
24:39
My first year of recovery was like peeling my skin off.
24:42
I didn't even know how to have a conversation with people sober.
24:44
Like, you know, I'm sitting in that 4 1/2 months, I started to
24:47
learn some of those skills. Like I hated the 10 seconds
24:51
after the serenity prayer where I'd have to go and pick who I
24:53
was going to talk to. That was like the most awkward
24:56
10 seconds of my life. So I would go and make a Bay
24:59
line to the kitchen and I would pick up the tea towel or that
25:01
like start doing the dishes. I wouldn't have to decide who I
25:03
was going to go have a conversation with because
25:05
someone would come and do the dishes with me.
25:07
And so I found these little hacks, little ways around my
25:10
social anxiety, but that, you know, at the sink, I learned how
25:13
to have a conversation with someone.
25:15
And, and my sponsor taught me as well, go call somebody and see
25:18
if you can get to the 10 minute mark of that phone call without
25:20
talking about yourself. And that was like a
25:22
revolutionary idea to me because, yeah, my whole life,
25:26
every conversation I'd ever had was like, feel sorry for me.
25:30
You know, like that was the only way I knew how to get attention
25:32
was like, my life is so hard. Feel sorry for me.
25:34
I was always seeking this like, validation.
25:37
And it's like through trauma dumping, you know, sorry to have
25:41
to try and have a conversation for 10 minutes.
25:43
And I would literally call be like, hello, I don't know what
25:46
to do. I don't know how to have a
25:48
conversation. But my sponsor told me that I
25:49
had to call you. So here I am.
25:50
Hi. And I was so awkward, but the
25:55
like the people that I was calling, you know, 'cause I was
25:57
instructed to call older sober members and like, really try and
26:00
lean on this strength in AA. And you all just wrapped me in
26:03
so much love. And you loved my little awkward
26:06
newcomer anxieties and and you had the grace to teach me how to
26:09
have a conversation on the phone.
26:11
And, you know, so yeah, my life was really changing.
26:14
But I hit the the 12 month mark and I was not like, you know,
26:18
cured. I still had alcoholism.
26:21
I still had resentments, I still had fears.
26:24
I still had that rat in my brain that was saying that a drink was
26:27
a good idea. And so I share that like the
26:30
first three months after turning one were the hardest period of
26:34
my recovery because I'm so sorry to the person I just turned 1,
26:38
but I actually think we lose a lot of people in that little
26:42
period because even though it's just another day, we know it's
26:44
just another day. I, I couldn't help but to build
26:47
it up to be this thing where I'm supposed to be fixed, right?
26:50
I'm supposed to feel the clouds part and God into my mind and
26:54
you know, and I'm suddenly a completely different person than
26:57
the day I was yesterday. Like the I don't know, I just,
27:01
that's what I expected and it didn't happen.
27:03
And that really sucked. So I had a really rough three
27:06
months, but I was hanging on for dear life because the oldest
27:12
open members were saying to me, don't leave before the miracle
27:14
happens. And that phrase don't leave
27:17
before the miracle happens, that that was the thing that kept me
27:20
going in those three months. And, and because I could see my
27:23
life was changing, but I all I could say was the parts that
27:27
weren't, you know, I was still just focused on the the parts
27:29
that still sucked. And so I got through step 12 and
27:32
my sponsor said to me, all right, well, now you've got to
27:35
put your hand up in meetings when when they asked who's
27:38
available to sponsor you, you've done the steps now you got to
27:40
put your hand up. And I was like, yeah, but Kate,
27:42
I haven't had a spiritual awakening that that's the
27:45
requirement to carry the messages that you've had the
27:47
spiritual awakening. And she said, you have you have
27:50
had it. You just can't see it.
27:51
Shut up and go sponsor. And it was, again, the best
27:55
advice I ever could have been given because it was in the act
27:58
of practicing Step 12 where I had a profound spiritual
28:01
experience. I was sitting there with the big
28:04
book in my hands on the other side of that interaction with
28:07
this little newcomer who was like 2 weeks sober.
28:10
And I was reading the doctor's opinion to them like my sponsor
28:13
had read it to me. And I got to the end of that
28:15
chapter where it says, we earnestly advise every alcoholic
28:19
to read this book. And though you might have come
28:21
to scoff, he may remain to pray. And it just cracked me open.
28:25
Like I, I sobbed, this little newcomer was like, what's
28:29
happening? And I'm like, I don't know
28:32
something. But I just saw like on the other
28:37
side of that exchange, that was where I saw how far I'd come,
28:42
you know, because I was such a scoffer and I was never going to
28:45
pray. And.
28:47
And yeah, so in that moment, I would not have been able to
28:50
articulate it. But that was the moment that the
28:52
obsession was removed from me. That was the moment that the
28:54
miracle happened because I saw that everything I'd ever been
28:57
through, all of those like hardships, all of that, you
28:59
would drink if you had a life like mine.
29:02
All of that stuff was the reason that I was sitting there with
29:04
that book in my hand, being able to help this person.
29:07
And I just. Yeah, I my whole life, I had the
29:09
biggest victim narrative and it was just ripped from me in that
29:12
moment. And it was weeks later, and I
29:15
was sitting in a meeting, and at the start of that meeting, they
29:17
read out the Step 10 promises. And that's where it says in our
29:21
book that the problem has been removed.
29:23
We have not even sworn off that. It's not even a fight, you know,
29:26
like we're placed in a position of neutrality.
29:29
And again, I sobbed. I cracked open because I that
29:33
was when I realized what had happened for me in that moment
29:35
was that the obsession had been removed and I was no longer
29:38
fighting. And I never ever thought that
29:40
that would happen for me. I guess I thought like, in that
29:42
year that I had up, it was rough, right?
29:46
Like it was rough, but I could see it was working.
29:49
And I was kind of like, I guess if I have to do this forever, I
29:51
will. Like, if it's going to feel like
29:53
this forever, I can see that it's better than the
29:56
alternative. My life is better now.
29:58
It was just still really hard. That fight was still really
30:01
hard. And yeah, it was in the
30:03
practicing of Step 12, but the miracle happened for me.
30:07
The obsession to drink was removed.
30:08
And so I really, one of my favorite lessons in recovery is
30:12
that I cannot wait to feel ready to do something.
30:16
It is in the doing that I will feel ready.
30:18
You know, if I waited to feel ready to sponsor, I never ever
30:22
would have done it. And I know it says in our
30:24
literature that we can pray for our fears to be removed.
30:28
But my experience is that my fear is only ever removed by
30:31
facing it, by putting myself in the situation that I'm afraid
30:34
of. So for me, I prefer to pray for
30:37
willingness to do the scary thing because that's what's
30:40
going to remove my fear. If I'm sitting there praying for
30:43
God to remove the fear before I do it, I'm probably looking for
30:48
God to make me not afraid so that I can do it right.
30:52
I just have to pray for willingness to do the scary
30:54
things. And, and it's always in doing
30:57
that, yeah, that my fears are removed.
30:59
And so today, like I am so grateful that I have a
31:03
relationship with the power greater than me.
31:04
And I, I choose to call it God now because it's simpler.
31:09
There's a Sandy B speaker type that I really love where he was
31:12
saying something about, you know, my higher power is like
31:16
the loving force of the universe that when I align myself with it
31:18
in my life and the life of those around me is transformed.
31:22
But God has less syllables than that.
31:24
And I was like, that makes sense.
31:27
I can get around that. So it's really nice that I'm not
31:30
allergic to the word God anymore.
31:32
But I'm also really, really grateful for the people in IA
31:34
who hold space for those who come in with a real aversion to
31:37
that word. Because I, you know, as a queer
31:39
person, I just had, I had a lot of trauma associated with that
31:44
word and it took me a really, really long time to soften on
31:47
it. And nobody ever tried to beat
31:49
that out of me. No one ever tried to convince me
31:52
that I had to call my higher powered.
31:53
God, I just love that our book says make up your own.
31:58
We like, we actually don't care. Make up your own.
32:01
And, and so that's how I, you know, what I was talking about
32:05
earlier about how I felt this sense of mistrust.
32:08
What do you people want from me? You know, like, why are you so
32:10
nice to me? It was through practicing step
32:13
12 and having that profound spiritual experience where I
32:16
felt the joy of freely passing on what was given to me that I
32:21
learned, Oh, wow, that's genuine.
32:23
Like that's actually real. When you're so nice to me,
32:25
that's not, that's not you looking for something from me.
32:28
That's, that's you freely giving because of the joy of freely
32:32
giving. And I just don't think there's
32:34
anything else in the world Black that we're so blessed to have
32:37
this program. And yeah, my like, my spiritual
32:39
practice today is certainly not perfect.
32:42
I, I'm really wrestling at the moment with the meditation
32:46
stuff. I struggle to slow down.
32:48
I really, I'm a workaholic as well as an alcoholic.
32:51
And I just am a busy bee. And slowing down doesn't come
32:54
easily to me. But another part of the book
32:56
that I really, really love is that God does not make too hard
33:00
terms with those who seek. And that came to me one day when
33:04
I was like doing some journaling and coloring in and like trying
33:07
to spend time with my higher power in a way that was like,
33:10
not just fully still, right? Like I was like, can I find a
33:14
way to use my hands and like be a bit creative?
33:16
And I had this little thought, right, this is bad that I should
33:19
be learning to sit still, be still and know that I'm God,
33:22
right? I should I must be learning to
33:23
sit still and as I was criticizing myself for the way
33:27
that I was trying to connect with my high power.
33:29
That sentence from the book God does not make too hard terms
33:32
with those who seek it just like smacked me in the chest and
33:35
again I started crying. I'm a bit of a sober.
33:36
There's a pattern there, but it was just really lovely to see
33:40
that my high power was just stoked that I was trying to
33:42
spend time with him. If I have to do a little
33:44
colouring in to spend time with God, they don't care.
33:47
They just stoked that I'm trying.
33:49
And a friend of mine recently pointed out in in how it works,
33:55
you know, it says that that last bit of how it works, it gets
33:58
read out a lot of meanings that God could and would if they were
34:01
sought. And it doesn't say that God
34:04
could and would if they were found or understood or analyzed
34:07
or made sense of. You know, it's not actually the
34:12
understanding God that matters. It's the seeking that God could
34:16
and would if they were sought. So all I have to do is seek in
34:20
my silly little imperfect way. And God's just stoked that I'm
34:24
doing that. So yeah, for anybody who's new
34:30
that, like, the best advice I ever got was just to keep coming
34:33
back no matter what. And, yeah, And, you know, to try
34:37
and, like, step outside my comfort zone.
34:38
That I think was something that really changed my recovery, to
34:40
find the meetings where I didn't actually feel very comfortable.
34:43
And look at why, you know, is there something in there that I
34:45
can grow? And that doesn't mean that I
34:48
always have to be putting myself in uncomfortable situations, but
34:52
sometimes, yeah, sometimes there's some growing that can be
34:54
done in there. Yeah.
34:57
I don't think I've got anything else to say.
34:59
I think I'll leave it there. A A has more than two million
35:03
recovering Alcoholics throughout the world.
35:06
In Australia there are about 18,000 members.
35:10
They're made in over 2000 local meetings spread around the
35:15
country. Meetings range in size from a
35:18
handful in some areas to hundreds or more in larger
35:22
communities. And once again, if anyone you
35:26
know is struggling with alcohol issues, please call Alcoholics
35:30
Announcing 1300 Double 00000 or visit their website on aa.org
35:38
dot AU.