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Sober Talk SA - Ash · Sober Talk SA

• 0:00
  Welcome to Sober Talk. I'm Dennis and I'm an alcoholic.
• 0:04
  Soap dear. Thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 0:08
  If you or anyone you know is struggling with alcohol, please
• 0:11
  call Alcoholics Anonymous on 1300 double 22222.
• 0:17
  I'll visit their website ata.org dot AU.
• 0:24
  I'll just run through the preamble of Alcoholics
• 0:27
  Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous is a
• 0:29
  fellowship of people who share the experience, strengthen hope
• 0:33
  with each other that they may solve their common problems, and
• 0:37
  help with us to recover from alcoholism.
• 0:40
  The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop
• 0:43
  drinking and no dues of fees. Fair membership.
• 0:46
  We are self supporting through our own contributions.
• 0:50
  He is not alive with any sect, denomination, politics,
• 0:54
  organization or institution, does not wish to engage in any
• 0:58
  controversy, neither endorses or oppose any causes.
• 1:03
  Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other Alcoholics
• 1:07
  are chief sobriety. Hi.
• 1:09
  Hi, My name is Ash. I'm an alcoholic.
• 1:11
  Ash. There you go.
• 1:13
  It's very honoured to be asked to be a guest speaker here.
• 1:17
  So I am a 35 year old. I have just celebrated a little
• 1:22
  over 4 years of sobriety one day at a time and like thank you.
• 1:29
  But, and I'm also going to mention and put a shout out to
• 1:33
  my little rabbits at home, Milo and Bella.
• 1:35
  Now the only reason that I shout them out is because they are one
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  of the many symbols of my recovery.
• 1:41
  They keep me grounded. They're like my children.
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  There's something that I would not have in when I was actively
• 1:47
  drinking. No one back in the day, Yeah,
• 1:50
  great. Now I'm back in the day would
• 1:52
  have trusted me to keep a house plant alive, let alone 2 little
• 1:55
  animals, you know? And so, yeah, I mean, I usually
• 2:00
  would share about what I did when I was drinking, you know,
• 2:03
  the amount of things that I could tell you what I got up to
• 2:06
  when I was drinking. You know, I'd go into them
• 2:08
  tomorrow. But you know, I'm a garden
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  variety alcoholic. It's probably nothing you've
• 2:12
  never heard before, right? So this is a spiritual meeting.
• 2:15
  So I'm going to sort of just focus on my spiritual journey,
• 2:21
  starting with the, I would say that basically the as long as I
• 2:27
  remember back when I was a kid, I was always very angry, very
• 2:32
  anxious, very, I hated the world.
• 2:34
  I hated everything. I hated the world.
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  And look, I didn't really know this, you know, you don't know
• 2:41
  these things until you're going to AI and you start practicing
• 2:43
  your program. But I hated everything and
• 2:45
  everyone. It's because it's what it
• 2:47
  represented inside of me that I didn't like about myself.
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  You know, I was that people pleasing driven.
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  I was a driven person. I got really good grades in
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  school. I was damn, the main reason I
• 3:01
  got good grades in school is because on the Ash, I don't get
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  B's. Ash doesn't get B's, he gets
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  A's. You know, that's so I was always
• 3:09
  driven by fear of not succeeding, you know, fear of
• 3:13
  financial security, fear of losing control.
• 3:18
  And I saw that as normal because I didn't think of anything else.
• 3:22
  Like I didn't know. Look, I didn't actually question
• 3:25
  it too much. What I did question is why is
• 3:27
  anyone else around me look at thinking like that or acting
• 3:30
  like that? But that's how I've, I carried
• 3:34
  on my life. And like, I didn't add drinking
• 3:38
  alcohol to the equation until I was about 20.
• 3:42
  But I always have that head and I hadn't had a name for it.
• 3:46
  I didn't know what it was. Why did I feel like that way,
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  you know? And so I said I drank enough to
• 3:54
  get here. But as much as I hated everyone
• 3:57
  and everything, one of the biggest things I did not have
• 4:00
  any time of day for was anything to do with religion,
• 4:03
  spirituality or stuff. And I'm concentrating on that
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  because of spiritual meeting. And, you know, I didn't even
• 4:09
  know the difference between spirituality and religion.
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  I thought it was just something that people that weren't
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  considered religious would call themselves something else, you
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  know, to seem more important. But it's, it's, it's a lot
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  different to that. And spirituality in the religion
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  is not, you know, it's a completely different thing.
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  And they are intertwined, of course, and using the word God
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  and using the word fear, you know, I would not do that.
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  I'm, I'm a man. I was not brought up with these
• 4:38
  ideals, but somewhere along the way, I, I was sort of the man.
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  I don't cry. I didn't cry growing up when I
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  tripped over. I didn't cry when family members
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  died, you know, because fear and crying was a sign of weakness.
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  I was just angry. I was just an angry ash.
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  And, you know, I did not believe that anger and fear were the
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  same thing. And so I didn't use the word
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  God. God made me feel dirty.
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  It made me feel dirty coming out of my mouth.
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  I would not do that. And if I heard it, it's like
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  nails on a chalkboard to me. You know, try to mention
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  anything about the Bible or any of that stuff.
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  Nah, I wouldn't want to punch you in the face.
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  You know, I'd have and I would have all those arguments against
• 5:25
  why, why God exists and what happens with this and what
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  happens with this, right? But I'm just shooting crap,
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  right? You know, I'm just come up with
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  my own sort of idea of it. And again, I when I first come
• 5:40
  into AI was the same thing. I mean, I come into AI because I
• 5:43
  just wanted to create the illusion that I'm trying with my
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  drinking. You know, my, I didn't come in
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  here. I didn't come in here kicking
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  and screaming, but I didn't come in here willingly.
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  If I, you know, my family suggested it.
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  So I came in with them and I didn't care about it.
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  I didn't like it. I didn't want it.
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  I was genuinely happy with all the success stories around me,
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  but I just good on you. Don't put that crap on me.
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  You know, all I wanted to do was go home and drink.
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  That's it, you know, And so I'm a garden variety alcoholic.
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  That's what Alcoholics are like in in addiction.
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  They just want to go home and do what they do best or do what I
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  did. Well thought I did best was
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  drink, you know, and little did I know when I from the first
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  time I ever come here, I didn't know.
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  I didn't want to know. I didn't realize, but I, I was
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  doing something for me in my own head.
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  You know that the saying, I'm not going to swear in here, but
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  you know the saying that it starts effing with your
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  drinking. It starts screwing with your
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  drinking and it did. I mean, by that time I was
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  drinking 4 liters of wine a day and I was stealing from everyone
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  around me pointing everything I could get my hands on because I
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  needed that one. That I didn't actually think I
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  was an alcoholic. I was just, I wanted to do it.
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  I got no obsession over this stuff.
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  I got no power over it. What?
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  Where were you to tell me that I might have an alcohol problem?
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  Who are you to tell me that I need to go to a A, right.
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  But in my own mind, you know, we are the manipulation, the
• 7:09
  manipulative types. If I in my own brain, I'm
• 7:12
  thinking in their own brain. If I go to a A, at least try it,
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  it would justify me to go home and have a drink, you know, And
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  I mean, I did that on and off for a while.
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  I went to a A, I'll come home. I drank.
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  I did one meeting a week of Salisbury.
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  But over time, and I, I genuinely believe it was linked
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  is that towards the end, because when I drank, I wasn't an angry,
• 7:37
  anxious person and judgmental person.
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  I was happy bubbly ash. When it is, you know, I'm like,
• 7:42
  get drunk, play video games. That's all I wanted to do.
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  But by the end of that, it felt made me feel gross.
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  It made me feel worse than when I was sober.
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  And I genuinely believe it is a A that was working in my own
• 7:58
  head that caused that to happen. But more importantly, it was
• 8:01
  something to do with a power of my own understanding, which I
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  had learned a little bit from when I come into a A if I was
• 8:08
  actually listening to what was happening.
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  But I never, as I said via time, I did not, I still didn't like
• 8:17
  the word God and didn't like anything to do with it.
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  But I said it started screwing my drinking a little bit.
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  I I found myself in periods of not drinking.
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  I wouldn't call it sobriety. Or maybe I shouldn't be pawning
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  my brother's stuff. Maybe I shouldn't be stealing my
• 8:31
  father's DVDs to get a drink. So I'll just might just go
• 8:33
  without today. That's how it happened.
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  So it started changing stuff for me, you know, and then I also,
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  I'd go through the whole story where I stopped drinking.
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  I went to in delivering Tremensen in hospital.
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  I come out and then I was just a, a, a, a, a, a, a.
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  It's great. I stayed sober for 15 months.
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  I was going to meetings. I made me a, a, my home
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  meetings, after meetings, after meetings.
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  I've got a sponsor, started going through the steps.
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  The thing is, I did the steps. I did all the steps in three
• 9:02
  months because like I say that I've done them, you know, that
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  that's how I carried out my 15 months of I'm not drinking.
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  But I mean, I said I've got a higher power.
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  I said I've got to go to God. I'm understanding because that's
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  part of the program, right? You need to have that tick,
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  tick, tick. I ticked all the boxes right.
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  But I mean by the end of that 15 months, I was, I was stopped
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  going to meetings. I thought I was fell in the same
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  trap. And then I decided that I wanted
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  to test that theory where I'm an alcoholic or not.
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  And I picked up a drink and then it took five months, 5 month
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  long. Hell, I describe it from the
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  moment I picked up the drink to the moment it was put down.
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  Now the thing that got me is because apart from other things
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  like I like intellect and I like this, I can't sit right with not
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  knowing things. I have to Google things.
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  I can't just sit there and just, oh, it might have been, I have
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  to figure it out, right? So after five months and I was
• 10:00
  in hospital again, that's where alcohol took me.
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  I went to a meeting and I got drunk again but it was a few
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  days after January 2nd, 2022 and I was cut.
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  I was living with my father at the time and I picked this as my
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  date because my father, my best friend, my best friend is stuck
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  through me thick and thin, never left my side.
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  I was coming down from my latest binge.
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  I was actually like starting to feel a bit better as you do.
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  And I go into the lounge room, he's watching TV and says
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  actually looking a bit better now, but I was craving a drink.
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  I was really craving a drink. I went into my room, I tried to
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  find any bit of alcohol I could and I found an NB little bourbon
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  bottle about that big and I tried to lick it out like there
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  was, there was barely, there was barely anything in there, but I
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  was licking it clean and, and I went into the lounge room again.
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  And the first thing my father said to me, he says, have you
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  got alcohol in the house, Ash? No, no, I don't.
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  I don't have alcohol. No, I don't.
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  He says, well, your eyes changed, your skin changed.
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  And now he's talking differently again than you did 5 minutes
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  ago. I mean, I've already got
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  resentful. I mean, no one's going to
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  question my drinking, right? But it wasn't then and there.
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  It was later on. I started going to meetings.
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  I started trying to do the next best thing.
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  What I did is I actually left my car at home, planned journeys.
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  I caught three buses sometimes to go into a meeting,
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  intentionally stayed out late. So by the time I got home, I was
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  too tired to do anything, go to bed, wake up and do it again.
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  I did that for about 3 months. Somewhere along the way, I got a
• 11:33
  new sponsor. So working through the sponsor,
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  I couldn't tell you where in that it was.
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  It might have been Step 3 or 4 again, but something had clicked
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  in my psyche. I was going to meetings and for
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  the first time when I was sharing, I could share about
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  what was going on in here, what was going on in between these
• 11:51
  two, between these two ears. And I could use the word God and
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  not feel dirty about it. So it's like when you you get
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  glimpse, you get glimpse of how you've changed, you know, over
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  over the time. But also it clicked is that that
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  moment when my father said to me, I didn't know what to make
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  of it at the time. And then I was left with a
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  quandary. I was left with, well, why am I
• 12:16
  still not drunk? Why was it only five months?
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  Why am I still not drunk again? Well, it can't have been
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  anything I did. So you hear about all these, all
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  the people that are here over the years in the mere meetings,
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  Eddie, Arthur, Jeff. And this is right, John.
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  Yeah, Peter, everyone. And it's not you, it's God.
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  And I mean, I sort of wrestled with the idea.
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  I wasn't sort of hung kind of hung up on the idea, but I did.
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  I was, I would, I would describe it.
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  I was beaten enough and I was desperate enough just to see how
• 12:53
  that would go. And that's part of my spiritual
• 12:56
  journey. I started, you know, doing
• 12:57
  meditations. I started going to the spiritual
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  speakers meetings. I started doing spiritual tapes.
• 13:02
  You know, I started, you know, I even went to church just to see
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  what it's like. You know, that was about a year
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  and a half ago. And then a year ago I got
• 13:10
  baptized. Now, I have a lifelong fear of
• 13:14
  putting my head underwater. But when that that morning I got
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  baptized in front of about 100 people and I did not care.
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  You know, little things like that give me the glimpse that
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  something has shifted along the way.
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  And then continuing my step work, I realized that that
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  moment when my father asked me if I had alcohol and I took that
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  small amount to actually make my eyes change, my skin change, and
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  I start talking differently. I believe today that God put
• 13:44
  those words in my best friend's mouth to deliver it to me when I
• 13:48
  was questioning my alcoholism. Because ever since then, I have
• 13:50
  not questioned at once. And the reason for that is
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  because I have to keep trying, practice the program and keep,
• 13:55
  keep to the best of my ability to what I've got in with we
• 13:59
  right now and the tools that I have, the practice of my
• 14:03
  program, the best of my ability to, to maintain that.
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  Because my, if I, you know, they say the, the alcoholic brain is
• 14:10
  in the back of the head doing push ups, waiting for you to
• 14:12
  screw up. I stay ahead of the curve by
• 14:15
  trying to do everything that I'm taught in these rooms, you know,
• 14:18
  and first and foremost is that these, these rooms and doing
• 14:21
  everything in these rooms keeps me close to God because a, a
• 14:24
  introduced me to God, A, a keeps my faith in God.
• 14:29
  My disease will prevail if I stop doing what I'm doing now.
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  January 2nd, 2022, you know, a little over 4 years of not
• 14:36
  having a drink. Now, my sobriety date used to be
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  my driving force. My first fifteen months, my
• 14:43
  sobriety, that was my driving force.
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  I saw because I'm, I'm a little bit of a gamer too.
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  I see it as my high score. For every day that I'm sober,
• 14:50
  I've got a higher score, right? Yeah.
• 14:54
  This bust and everything that transpired during it, everything
• 14:58
  that transpired after it has humbled me knowing that this is
• 15:06
  a day that that my sobriety date is a good day to remember.
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  It's a pinnacle of my life. It's the start of my new life.
• 15:14
  But it's just a day really, because the only difference
• 15:19
  between me and someone who walks through these doors for the very
• 15:22
  first time is by the grace of my God, I got here before they did
• 15:27
  and I got here enough to be able to listen to what the solution
• 15:32
  is. You know, I do, you know, I
• 15:36
  still go to church because I found something that works.
• 15:39
  And this is not of course, it's not a religious program.
• 15:41
  It's a spiritual 1. And I used to have all these,
• 15:44
  you know, I had the answers for everything like someone would
• 15:46
  say to me in a meeting, well, this is a religious, this is a
• 15:48
  spiritual program, not a religious one or why the F is a
• 15:51
  held in a church. Then you know, I had all the
• 15:54
  answers. Now me being that intellect,
• 15:58
  not, you know, wanting to know everything and doing good at
• 16:02
  school and going to university and you know, that sort of stuff
• 16:04
  like that, that's that's great. You know, Alcoholics infer I'm a
• 16:07
  common alcoholic because Alcoholics generally are
• 16:10
  extremely intelligent people. Now, for me, I used to think
• 16:15
  that I was a fast learner because as soon as I got out of
• 16:18
  hospital for my DE TS, I stayed sober.
• 16:20
  My compulsion to drink had left me straight away, right?
• 16:24
  That was awesome, a downfall because it led me to believe
• 16:26
  that maybe I'm not an alcoholic. But the only reason I got to
• 16:29
  that kind of thinking is if I stopped coming to these rooms, I
• 16:32
  stopped coming to these rooms. What's it also a downfall for?
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  Is that because I'm all of those things, I think I know better.
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  So I think I'm a fast learner, but I'm actually a slow learner.
• 16:46
  And that's good because now that means I can't miss anything, you
• 16:49
  know? Now, if I start coming to
• 16:51
  meetings, I I I start thinking I'll remember all the stuff I'm
• 16:55
  saying tonight, but I'll be thinking, yeah, but yeah.
• 16:57
  But yeah. But yeah.
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  But yeah. But yeah.
• 16:59
  But pull me in. I'll drink because, you know,
• 17:03
  look, I've asked myself this millions of times as well.
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  So why am I still drunk? So sorry.
• 17:09
  Why am I still sober today? It could have been anything I
• 17:13
  did. It really couldn't have been
• 17:14
  anything I did. You know, when I hear Arthur all
• 17:16
  the time, I can't take any credit for his sobriety.
• 17:18
  I used to get so annoyed at that because I'm the one doing this
• 17:21
  and I'm the one doing this. I'm going to the meetings.
• 17:23
  God's not picking me up and going to the meetings, is he?
• 17:26
  God gives me the strength to be able to get up out of bed and do
• 17:29
  it. God gives me the strength to
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  keep coming back. You know, God's always been
• 17:34
  looking after me my whole life. I just wasn't open to see any of
• 17:36
  that. But once I was beaten enough to
• 17:40
  become desperate enough to get enough bullshit kicked out of me
• 17:43
  to become teachable, I could start to see that.
• 17:47
  And if it was a bus that took that, then so be it.
• 17:49
  That's part of my journey, you know?
• 17:52
  And then I said, go from me being when I was younger to
• 17:56
  hating God, hating everyone, hating everything, then actual
• 18:01
  fact hating all myself to someone who's tries to stay
• 18:05
  sober on a daily basis, tries to do the best thing he can on a
• 18:08
  daily basis. Look, I'm four years.
• 18:10
  I can't expect 30 odd years of my thinking to be gone in four
• 18:13
  years, right? But but I when I do, and that's
• 18:16
  the importance of inventories and self reflection and looking
• 18:20
  back where you were and looking where you are now, you start
• 18:23
  realizing how much you've changed.
• 18:25
  You know, I, I, I get angry. I certainly get angry.
• 18:29
  That's always going to stay with me.
• 18:31
  The thing is these days I noticed about myself that I've
• 18:35
  got a lot longer fuse. You want to call it?
• 18:38
  It's like I haven't achieved sobriety and I, I don't have, I
• 18:41
  still got a high ego and I still got a low self esteem, right?
• 18:45
  But I would say that those things I like to describe as
• 18:49
  those things have cracks in it, that high ego, rigid high ego
• 18:54
  and low self esteem have cracks in it, which means it allows
• 18:57
  some spiritual calmness to come in, you know, and that's all I
• 19:01
  can ask for myself. But when if I start seeing that
• 19:04
  in myself, and I mean, people could tell me that I've changed
• 19:07
  all, all the time, right? The people, the people have
• 19:09
  changed told me I've changed all the time.
• 19:11
  And then of course I won't believe it because I know better
• 19:13
  and I know myself better than everyone else, right?
• 19:15
  But then you do get glimpses of it.
• 19:17
  So if if you, all I got to say is if you're new, you're
• 19:21
  struggling, you're going to stick to the plan, stick it one
• 19:24
  day at a time, 1 moment at a time if you need, because it
• 19:27
  will happen. It's like when you accept step
• 19:31
  one for me, when I say when I accept step one is I couldn't
• 19:36
  quite describe the moment when it happened, but I knew it when
• 19:40
  I saw it and people saw it before me before I did, you
• 19:43
  know, and, and I said, I'm not the same person as I was.
• 19:48
  And every time I have days where I feel like shit, but these
• 19:53
  those are the days are the most important part of the days for
• 19:55
  me. Because The thing is when I
• 19:59
  start feeling like shit, there's also like positive stuff, like
• 20:01
  coming in behind it. You know, that that's I'm not
• 20:04
  always negative all the time and angry and distinctful and
• 20:09
  egotistic and arrogant all the time.
• 20:11
  I've got moments where I'm just not, I've got sometimes I get
• 20:15
  angry at things, you know, we all get angry at things and I
• 20:17
  get overly angry at things And other days I feel indifferent to
• 20:20
  it. It's like something that's
• 20:22
  supposed to piss me off might piss me off, right?
• 20:26
  Something that. It's not worth getting pissed
• 20:29
  off about. I'll get angry at other days.
• 20:34
  It doesn't matter, right? I, I never had, I've never had
• 20:38
  days where I could just sit there and just take it.
• 20:40
  I can sit there and just not even care about it.
• 20:42
  And you know what's happening around me.
• 20:45
  That's my whole idea of progress, not perfection now.
• 20:48
  And if I, if I, if I stay away from this program long enough, I
• 20:51
  know I will drink. The only question is, how long
• 20:54
  will it take? And the moment the alcohol would
• 20:57
  hit my lips, I'm I'm back in that same old cycle of, you
• 21:02
  know, it's like, yeah, I don't want to go there.
• 21:04
  And I know from my past that I know exactly what I have to do
• 21:10
  on a daily basis to make sure that that that horrible, ugly
• 21:13
  ventions and horrible ugly feeling to drink alcohol, that
• 21:18
  obsession that only another alcoholic knows what it's like.
• 21:22
  I know what can cause that to come back and I can know what
• 21:26
  can cause that to stay away. And so I'm going to keep doing
• 21:29
  that. And that's my spiritual journey
• 21:31
  and I'll leave it there. Thank you A.
• 21:33
  A has more than two million recovering Alcoholics throughout
• 21:38
  the world. In Australia there are about
• 21:41
  18,000 members. They're made in over 2000 local
• 21:46
  meetings spread around the country.
• 21:49
  Meetings range in size from a handful in some areas to
• 21:53
  hundreds or more in larger communities.
• 21:56
  And once again, if anyone you know is struggling with alcohol
• 22:01
  issues, please call Alcoholics Announcing 1300 Double 00000 or
• 22:07
  visit their website on aa.org dot AU.