1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,040 San Diego was filled with the most homey grassroots, 2 00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:08,560 real conversations, no pretenses, you know, and yeah. 3 00:00:08,560 --> 00:00:11,920 So my sobriety date is July 1st, 2003. 4 00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:13,900 My home group's the Hermosa Beach Men's Stag. 5 00:00:13,900 --> 00:00:17,420 We meet Monday night at the Hermosa Beach Alano Club. 6 00:00:17,420 --> 00:00:18,800 If you guys ever want to brave 7 00:00:18,800 --> 00:00:20,360 that kind of southbound traffic, 8 00:00:20,360 --> 00:00:22,920 you're welcome to come and visit us. 9 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:24,880 And my sponsor's a guy named Bill Cleveland, 10 00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:26,920 and I actually just came from his house. 11 00:00:26,920 --> 00:00:28,800 My friend, you all met Mahesh, 12 00:00:28,800 --> 00:00:30,600 who's visiting from New Zealand, 13 00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:33,640 and it's crazy to be sober. 14 00:00:33,640 --> 00:00:37,280 It's, Susan, thank you so much for your 10-minute pitch. 15 00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:38,280 I was just thinking about it. 16 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:40,280 I just came from a house in the South Bay 17 00:00:40,280 --> 00:00:43,800 that I bought this year, this last year in December. 18 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:45,520 We left, I've got a puppy, 19 00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:48,440 a new puppy that's being shepherded by the older dogs. 20 00:00:48,440 --> 00:00:50,320 I had a pit bull that I got when I was about, 21 00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:52,540 my gosh, I guess, 20 years sober. 22 00:00:52,540 --> 00:00:54,120 I must've been four years sober, 23 00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:56,080 'cause he was almost 16 when he passed away. 24 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:58,440 And he just recently passed away at the end of last year, 25 00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:01,160 and we got a puppy now for the other dog. 26 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:05,040 And I have a beautiful woman that I met 27 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:07,720 as a result of being a service in Alcoholics Anonymous 28 00:01:07,720 --> 00:01:10,040 that I live with, that lives with me, rather. 29 00:01:10,040 --> 00:01:11,420 Doesn't throw me away, loves me, 30 00:01:11,420 --> 00:01:12,760 gives me room to be myself. 31 00:01:12,760 --> 00:01:13,880 And guys, I'm weird. 32 00:01:13,880 --> 00:01:17,060 I'm a weird person who's got a lot of ideas, 33 00:01:17,060 --> 00:01:18,680 a lot of opinions, a lot of energy, 34 00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:22,840 a lot of counterintuitive neurodivergent proclivities, right? 35 00:01:22,840 --> 00:01:25,720 And she just gives me a wide feel. 36 00:01:25,720 --> 00:01:28,680 And I was just thinking when Susan was talking 37 00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:30,220 about how grateful I am, 38 00:01:30,220 --> 00:01:32,260 despite it being a very long day for me, 39 00:01:32,260 --> 00:01:33,960 despite leaving this giant party 40 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:35,760 where all our friends get together once a year 41 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:38,120 to celebrate birthdays that are in July. 42 00:01:38,120 --> 00:01:39,480 200 people were there today, 43 00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:41,000 and sitting out in the sun all day, 44 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,560 Russia and Mahesh wanted the roll dog with it. 45 00:01:43,560 --> 00:01:46,120 And here we are, doing Alcoholics Anonymous. 46 00:01:46,120 --> 00:01:48,520 The best thing I've learned in 20 years of sobriety 47 00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:50,560 is that it doesn't matter what you think. 48 00:01:50,560 --> 00:01:51,760 It just doesn't matter. 49 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:54,440 You can hate every step of the journey you're on, 50 00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:56,260 so long as you remain on the journey. 51 00:01:56,260 --> 00:01:57,100 It doesn't matter. 52 00:01:57,100 --> 00:01:59,880 My thinking and my thoughts don't necessarily 53 00:01:59,880 --> 00:02:02,560 have an impact on my usefulness when I show up, right? 54 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:04,440 The action doesn't care why it's being taken. 55 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:06,320 So here I am, instead of watching UFC. 56 00:02:06,320 --> 00:02:09,860 And I know, but the reality is that there is gratitude. 57 00:02:09,860 --> 00:02:11,600 And there's something that happens in the, 58 00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:12,880 not just in the alcoholic mind, 59 00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:15,360 but to make it larger than in the human mind, 60 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:16,480 that is dichotomous. 61 00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:18,400 Something either is good or it is bad. 62 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:19,980 Something is either left or it is right. 63 00:02:19,980 --> 00:02:21,980 Something is either right or it is dark. 64 00:02:21,980 --> 00:02:24,680 There is this bifurcation that takes place. 65 00:02:24,680 --> 00:02:27,420 And I think that what I've found, the longer I stay sober, 66 00:02:27,420 --> 00:02:30,240 the truer most things are at the same time. 67 00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:32,860 That it doesn't matter if I don't want to be here, 68 00:02:32,860 --> 00:02:35,880 it won't limit my ability to be useful. 69 00:02:35,880 --> 00:02:37,160 I don't want to do anything. 70 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:40,280 95% of the things that I'm forced to do as an adult male, 71 00:02:40,280 --> 00:02:41,240 I don't want to do. 72 00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:42,480 I don't want to go to work 73 00:02:42,480 --> 00:02:45,360 or even brush my hair sometimes, you know? 74 00:02:45,360 --> 00:02:47,800 So it's just like, but all of a sudden you get sober, 75 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:49,080 you get a little bit of time under your belt, 76 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:50,960 you start getting an ego that heals itself. 77 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:52,840 And then you're like, I can do whatever the hell I want. 78 00:02:52,840 --> 00:02:55,540 What I have to say somehow becomes an authority 79 00:02:55,540 --> 00:02:57,000 on the universe, you know? 80 00:02:57,000 --> 00:02:58,660 And so if you're out there and you're struggling 81 00:02:58,660 --> 00:03:01,520 and you're thinking because your heart doesn't feel in it 82 00:03:01,520 --> 00:03:04,120 today or your mind is out to get you today, 83 00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:06,160 that has anything to do with whether or not 84 00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:07,400 you should be at the meeting tonight. 85 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:08,240 It doesn't. 86 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:09,820 And a little bit about me, 87 00:03:09,820 --> 00:03:13,400 'cause I only got 35 minutes and like Susan, 88 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:14,960 trying to sum that up in 10. 89 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:17,880 I'm incredibly grateful to be sober, man. 90 00:03:17,880 --> 00:03:20,040 I've had a shift of consciousness 91 00:03:20,040 --> 00:03:23,020 as a result of working the 12 steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. 92 00:03:23,020 --> 00:03:26,860 And I was a victim of that shift of consciousness. 93 00:03:26,860 --> 00:03:29,060 I did not know that it was happening to me. 94 00:03:29,060 --> 00:03:31,800 I had no idea that my life was going to change. 95 00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:34,740 I had no idea that my usefulness would be restored. 96 00:03:34,740 --> 00:03:37,400 I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was a cult. 97 00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:39,080 When I grew up in Washington state, 98 00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:42,480 I was born near Mount Rainier and my dad was a drunk. 99 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:43,880 My mom couldn't handle it. 100 00:03:43,880 --> 00:03:45,240 We left. 101 00:03:45,240 --> 00:03:47,360 My dad would show up. 102 00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:49,540 My mom was a codependent also. 103 00:03:49,540 --> 00:03:52,160 So she fell in love and we were in someone else, 104 00:03:52,160 --> 00:03:55,120 another man's home within six months and they were engaged. 105 00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:58,380 And this guy was true blue, all American barrel chested, 106 00:03:58,380 --> 00:04:00,380 cowboy from Billings, Montana. 107 00:04:00,380 --> 00:04:03,440 Son of a gunsmith, tech Sergeant in the Air Force, 108 00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:06,440 youth pastor at the church, can fix anything, right? 109 00:04:06,440 --> 00:04:08,300 Big old mustache. 110 00:04:08,300 --> 00:04:10,640 This guy was so country, his middle name was Buster. 111 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:14,800 So Buster dragged us to church four times a week. 112 00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:16,840 And when we didn't listen, he beat the shit out of us. 113 00:04:16,840 --> 00:04:17,880 And that's how I grew up, 114 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:20,560 going to church and hiding the bruises. 115 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:23,560 Being told to love one another and turn the other cheek 116 00:04:23,560 --> 00:04:25,200 and watching the door shut 117 00:04:25,200 --> 00:04:27,520 as I hear my mom getting smacked in the other room. 118 00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:29,880 So, and then my dad would show up every once in a while 119 00:04:29,880 --> 00:04:33,480 and try to see me and then Buster would answer the door 120 00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:36,840 with a deer rifle, 30-06 and try to kill my father 121 00:04:36,840 --> 00:04:37,680 on the doorstep. 122 00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:38,960 We had about 150 weapons in the house, 123 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:40,280 just the son of a gunsmith. 124 00:04:40,280 --> 00:04:41,880 You learn how not to touch an eye millimeter 125 00:04:41,880 --> 00:04:43,000 by getting pistol whipped by one 126 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:44,080 and almost get your nose broke. 127 00:04:44,080 --> 00:04:46,800 He was belt buckle kind of guy. 128 00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:51,220 And despite that, I had a pretty, other than that, 129 00:04:51,220 --> 00:04:52,720 I had a pretty decent childhood. 130 00:04:52,720 --> 00:04:54,800 I mean, I can paint you guys this picture 131 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:56,520 of how horrific everything was. 132 00:04:56,520 --> 00:04:59,800 But you know, I remember when I was three years sober, 133 00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:01,840 maybe, yeah, maybe about three years sober, 134 00:05:01,840 --> 00:05:04,640 my mom had found a letter from this guy during the divorce 135 00:05:04,640 --> 00:05:06,360 and she decided she wanted to read it. 136 00:05:06,360 --> 00:05:08,040 Now my entire life, you guys gotta understand, 137 00:05:08,040 --> 00:05:10,600 I had this monster who not only kept me from my father, 138 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:11,960 he beat the crap out of my mother, 139 00:05:11,960 --> 00:05:13,160 he beat the crap out of me. 140 00:05:13,160 --> 00:05:15,600 He turned off any possibility of me ever being able 141 00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:18,120 to trust God, Christianity, et cetera, all of it. 142 00:05:18,120 --> 00:05:19,560 I just, when I was eight years old, 143 00:05:19,560 --> 00:05:20,800 I threw my Bible in the trash 144 00:05:20,800 --> 00:05:22,540 and I thought I'd never need it, or I was gone. 145 00:05:22,540 --> 00:05:25,200 And he wrote my mom, you know, 146 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:26,360 he used to call me Pipsqueak. 147 00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:28,400 And I remember, and she read this letter to me 148 00:05:28,400 --> 00:05:30,600 and he said, "This isn't fair to Josh. 149 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:32,800 This isn't fair, tell Pipsqueak I love him. 150 00:05:32,800 --> 00:05:33,680 I miss him. 151 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:34,960 I want to take him camping. 152 00:05:34,960 --> 00:05:35,800 I want to." 153 00:05:35,800 --> 00:05:39,120 And I realized that despite this guy's mutations, right, 154 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:41,480 he loved me, that that was the best he had. 155 00:05:41,480 --> 00:05:44,120 When your only tool is a hammer, everything's a nail. 156 00:05:44,120 --> 00:05:47,880 And I forgave him, I 100% forgave this guy. 157 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:50,040 I don't hold any animosity toward him. 158 00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:52,000 You know, he built me tree houses. 159 00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:53,600 He taught me how to fly model planes. 160 00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:55,280 He tried to teach me how to fix stuff, 161 00:05:55,280 --> 00:05:56,640 which I wasn't interested in. 162 00:05:56,640 --> 00:05:57,840 He tried to do stuff. 163 00:05:57,840 --> 00:06:00,160 It's just, he was raised by another cowboy 164 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:01,520 who beat the crap out of him. 165 00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:02,640 That's just the way it was. 166 00:06:02,640 --> 00:06:06,280 And Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a new vantage point 167 00:06:06,280 --> 00:06:07,880 to be able to take a look at the lens 168 00:06:07,880 --> 00:06:12,160 of my traumatic upbringing and let it be okay. 169 00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:14,440 God uses garbage to make flowers. 170 00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:15,280 You know what I mean? 171 00:06:15,280 --> 00:06:16,120 It fertilizes. 172 00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:18,720 Everything in the forest belongs in the forest. 173 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:21,840 Everything in our lives feeds everything else in our lives, 174 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:24,360 including the darkness, including the bad stuff, 175 00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:26,000 including the mistakes. 176 00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:29,280 And it's crazy to me that God, a higher power, 177 00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:32,560 the ultimate verbatim, the periodic table, 178 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:34,680 I don't care what it is, you know, to you, 179 00:06:34,680 --> 00:06:38,440 the immutable universal law that causes flowers 180 00:06:38,440 --> 00:06:39,920 to grow through concrete. 181 00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:43,080 You know, like there is, whatever that is, 182 00:06:43,080 --> 00:06:47,280 has transformed my life and made an accountant 183 00:06:47,280 --> 00:06:49,000 for all of my mistakes. 184 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:51,000 And the longer I stay sober, 185 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:52,120 and this is gonna be weird, guys, 186 00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:54,560 'cause I'm weird, like I said, so I already warned you, 187 00:06:54,560 --> 00:06:56,320 Bill calls me the rabbit hole guy. 188 00:06:56,320 --> 00:06:59,600 So you can already get a taste, you know, 189 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:01,400 because when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, 190 00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:02,400 I was 18 years old. 191 00:07:02,400 --> 00:07:03,640 I had long black hair. 192 00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:06,120 I had four holes in my face and the piercings 193 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:08,000 they made me take out to enter into sober living. 194 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:10,280 I had a upside down cross carved into this arm 195 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:12,200 and a pentagram carved into this chest. 196 00:07:12,200 --> 00:07:14,080 I had cigarette burns all up and down my arms, 197 00:07:14,080 --> 00:07:16,600 combat boots, was playing in black metal bands, 198 00:07:16,600 --> 00:07:19,280 upside down crosses and pentagrams all over me 199 00:07:19,280 --> 00:07:22,760 and looking at people at the log cabin 200 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:23,760 like I wanted to eat them. 201 00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:26,280 And I didn't do my laundry for the first 90 days 202 00:07:26,280 --> 00:07:27,680 of my sobriety 'cause I didn't know how. 203 00:07:27,680 --> 00:07:28,960 Never done laundry before. 204 00:07:28,960 --> 00:07:30,560 You know, my mom did everything for me. 205 00:07:30,560 --> 00:07:32,480 I was that guy sitting in the command center 206 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,240 writing a manifesto online before it was cool, 207 00:07:35,240 --> 00:07:38,360 studying demonology, thinking I was gonna find 208 00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:40,800 buried treasure if I scrawled stuff on a clay tablet. 209 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:43,400 Like I'm telling you, I might've done the other stuff, 210 00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:46,920 Susan, one time for about two years straight. 211 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:49,360 And you know, and I would just drink. 212 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:51,440 Now the other thing I'll backtrack a little bit. 213 00:07:51,440 --> 00:07:52,840 After that whole thing happened, 214 00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:54,800 eventually one night I got knocked unconscious. 215 00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:55,640 I was eight years old. 216 00:07:55,640 --> 00:07:57,720 It was the eighth concussion probably 217 00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:00,600 that I'd received in that marriage. 218 00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:02,880 And my mom called the cops on him. 219 00:08:02,880 --> 00:08:03,840 And here's the other thing. 220 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:06,040 He was threatening me to not tell her 221 00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:08,240 and he was threatening her to not tell me. 222 00:08:08,240 --> 00:08:09,360 So there was this bubble 223 00:08:09,360 --> 00:08:11,680 and there was a convergence that took place. 224 00:08:11,680 --> 00:08:13,600 And when that convergence took place 225 00:08:13,600 --> 00:08:15,240 and everything got out on the table, 226 00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:16,920 my mom called the cops on the guy. 227 00:08:16,920 --> 00:08:17,760 He got arrested. 228 00:08:17,760 --> 00:08:18,880 We packed all of our stuff 229 00:08:18,880 --> 00:08:20,040 and we left in the middle of the night. 230 00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:22,120 And we didn't have any money. 231 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,280 And we lived in the back of a pickup truck camper shell 232 00:08:24,280 --> 00:08:26,760 in someone's front yard that she knew from high school 233 00:08:26,760 --> 00:08:27,880 while we got on our feet. 234 00:08:27,880 --> 00:08:30,800 And my dad came back into my life for a time 235 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:33,040 and I spent time up on his ranch in Washington. 236 00:08:33,040 --> 00:08:35,040 And he lived out in a little town, 237 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:38,960 crap town called Eatonville near a dairy farm. 238 00:08:38,960 --> 00:08:41,200 And so you could smell the cows every, you know, 239 00:08:41,200 --> 00:08:42,600 but he had a plot of land. 240 00:08:42,600 --> 00:08:44,600 We had ponies, chickens, the whole nine. 241 00:08:44,600 --> 00:08:47,800 And I got to know my father a little bit. 242 00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:50,480 And then promptly when I was 10 years old, he died. 243 00:08:50,480 --> 00:08:51,720 I got pulled out of school. 244 00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:54,040 I didn't know my dad had a problem with alcoholism. 245 00:08:54,040 --> 00:08:55,640 I had no idea that he'd been, 246 00:08:55,640 --> 00:08:57,400 my mom was in cigarette filled rooms 247 00:08:57,400 --> 00:08:59,160 in the AA meetings with my dad 248 00:08:59,160 --> 00:09:00,280 while he was reading the big book, 249 00:09:00,280 --> 00:09:01,360 but he never got a sponsor. 250 00:09:01,360 --> 00:09:02,280 He never worked the steps. 251 00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:04,440 He was one of the hungry ghosts 252 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:06,640 that fades in and out of these rooms. 253 00:09:06,640 --> 00:09:07,480 But he never got it. 254 00:09:07,480 --> 00:09:08,640 He never got the message 255 00:09:08,640 --> 00:09:10,840 and wasn't capable of hearing it. 256 00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:12,760 Or, you know what, the longer I get sober, 257 00:09:12,760 --> 00:09:15,080 like I said, guys, all the lines fall apart. 258 00:09:15,080 --> 00:09:16,400 It's just one big thing. 259 00:09:16,400 --> 00:09:18,680 And I don't know if that was his, 260 00:09:18,680 --> 00:09:20,640 I think some people might come here to suffer. 261 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:22,080 I don't know if everyone gets to win. 262 00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:24,480 I don't know if some souls just have work to work out 263 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:26,320 on this plane and that's just how it is. 264 00:09:26,320 --> 00:09:29,560 And so he did not get the answer he was looking for. 265 00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:31,320 His work concluded and he left. 266 00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:34,240 And so I was 10 and I remember getting pulled out 267 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:36,520 giving the Taco Bell, double decker taco, 268 00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:37,840 and then told your dad is dead. 269 00:09:37,840 --> 00:09:39,320 And right after that, I mean, 270 00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:41,640 I started running away from home, smoking cigarettes, 271 00:09:41,640 --> 00:09:43,080 all that anger that I'd felt 272 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:44,640 that was already demonstrating itself. 273 00:09:44,640 --> 00:09:46,480 When I was four, they started sending me to therapy 274 00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:48,560 'cause I was drawing pictures of dead bodies of monsters 275 00:09:48,560 --> 00:09:50,600 and all sorts of weird stuff. 276 00:09:50,600 --> 00:09:53,400 And they're like, "Is your home life okay?" 277 00:09:53,400 --> 00:09:56,520 And by the time I got to AA, I had 14 years of therapy. 278 00:09:56,520 --> 00:09:58,560 I've been into way more therapists 279 00:09:58,560 --> 00:10:00,520 than the double of the people in this room. 280 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:03,080 I've had three psychiatric evaluations. 281 00:10:03,080 --> 00:10:06,920 And when I was, by the time from 10 to 12, 282 00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:08,920 I just needed a drink and I didn't know it. 283 00:10:08,920 --> 00:10:12,360 I had so much anger and fear and problems 284 00:10:12,360 --> 00:10:14,040 with interpersonal relationships 285 00:10:14,040 --> 00:10:16,840 and trust and you name it, I had it. 286 00:10:16,840 --> 00:10:21,000 And I finally got, when I was 12 years old, 287 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:22,680 two years of that, my mom picked me up 288 00:10:22,680 --> 00:10:23,840 and took me to a hospital 289 00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:25,360 and told me my grandpa was having a heart attack. 290 00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:27,440 I'd run away to some guy's house, she picked me up. 291 00:10:27,440 --> 00:10:30,520 I had blue Liberty spikes in my hair, cussing, F word, 292 00:10:30,520 --> 00:10:33,480 every other word, smoking Marlboro Reds, you know? 293 00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:36,680 And she took me to this hospital 294 00:10:36,680 --> 00:10:38,080 and said, "Your grandpa's back there." 295 00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:39,520 And we walked through and they shut the door 296 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:41,200 and lock at them in a mental institution. 297 00:10:41,200 --> 00:10:44,240 And I spent about a year in a mental institution 298 00:10:44,240 --> 00:10:46,360 and that's where they put me on all the medications 299 00:10:46,360 --> 00:10:48,000 that I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. 300 00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:49,120 I've been on a lot. 301 00:10:49,120 --> 00:10:52,040 I've been on the Seroquel, Respiradol, Depico, 302 00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:57,040 Wellbutrin, you know, Selexa, Prozac, Respiradol, 303 00:10:57,040 --> 00:11:00,280 if I didn't say that already, Trazadone, you name it. 304 00:11:00,280 --> 00:11:01,440 I was on a lot of stuff. 305 00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:03,920 I had six medications when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. 306 00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:06,240 If you're on medication, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. 307 00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:08,000 You're allowed to be here on that stuff 308 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:09,720 and you'll figure that out with your sponsor 309 00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:11,440 and hopefully not with the pressure of the group. 310 00:11:11,440 --> 00:11:14,160 'Cause I know some of us have good and well-intentioned, 311 00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:16,280 especially in this age where everyone's impulse 312 00:11:16,280 --> 00:11:17,760 seems to be treated immediately 313 00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:19,760 by someone who has a profit motive 314 00:11:19,760 --> 00:11:21,440 that may or may not be incentivized 315 00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:23,000 by the pharmaceutical companies. 316 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:26,680 I get it, that like sometimes we want to be, 317 00:11:26,680 --> 00:11:28,480 we want people to get honest, 318 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:30,680 but if someone really needs that stuff, 319 00:11:30,680 --> 00:11:33,120 I've watched people kill themselves in Alcoholics Anonymous 320 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:34,800 by being pressured to get off their medication 321 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:36,000 'cause it's not sober. 322 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:37,520 So we just gotta be careful, you know? 323 00:11:37,520 --> 00:11:40,360 We have a big responsibility when someone who's in need 324 00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:42,880 and is damaged walks through these doors 325 00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:44,800 and doesn't have anywhere else to go. 326 00:11:44,800 --> 00:11:47,120 We don't wanna make the last safe house on the block 327 00:11:47,120 --> 00:11:48,960 an unsafe place for people. 328 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:52,080 And if you're an atheist, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous. 329 00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:52,920 I thought I was one. 330 00:11:52,920 --> 00:11:54,200 I wasn't really an atheist. 331 00:11:54,200 --> 00:11:56,160 I was more an antagonist of God. 332 00:11:56,160 --> 00:11:58,200 I think I was just, man, I was one of those. 333 00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:01,000 It says some of us that have been violently anti-religious 334 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:02,880 in the big book, and that was definitely me. 335 00:12:02,880 --> 00:12:04,240 I was playing in black metal bands, 336 00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:06,200 driving around looking for churches to burn down 337 00:12:06,200 --> 00:12:07,920 with my friends drunk in a blackout, 338 00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:10,720 like just mean and angry and so pissed 339 00:12:10,720 --> 00:12:13,080 that everyone had screwed up my life, you know? 340 00:12:13,080 --> 00:12:16,040 And that's how we got here at 18, and it was there. 341 00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:17,040 And I started drinking 342 00:12:17,040 --> 00:12:18,440 when I got out of the mental institution. 343 00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:20,240 I tried killing myself while I was there. 344 00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:22,000 I didn't succeed, but I'll tell you what. 345 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:23,120 When I put the laces, 346 00:12:23,120 --> 00:12:25,040 I got transferred to a medium security residential 347 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:26,280 management treatment center. 348 00:12:26,280 --> 00:12:28,760 All in all, this whole thing, inpatient for a while, 349 00:12:28,760 --> 00:12:32,400 outpatient for a week, put back in inpatient for lockdown. 350 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:34,040 And then, like, that would happen. 351 00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:36,080 That all happened for about a year when I was 12. 352 00:12:36,080 --> 00:12:39,320 And when I finally got out, I tried drinking. 353 00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:41,920 I tried drinking, and it was wonderful. 354 00:12:41,920 --> 00:12:43,440 It was just what I'd been looking for. 355 00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:45,760 And the only problem is that if I tried hard liquor, 356 00:12:45,760 --> 00:12:47,520 which is what all my friends thought was cool, 357 00:12:47,520 --> 00:12:48,800 it felt like an alien was trying 358 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:50,440 to burst out of my solar plexus 359 00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:52,480 because I'd get violent, abdominal, 360 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:55,400 and, like, the cramps in my esophagus. 361 00:12:55,400 --> 00:12:57,440 It felt like I was going to poop myself 362 00:12:57,440 --> 00:12:59,040 and vomit at the same time. 363 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:01,520 So I only did it about 30 times, right, 364 00:13:01,520 --> 00:13:03,520 before I discovered malt liquor. 365 00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:06,240 And when I discovered Steel Reserve 211, 366 00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:07,960 it was just enough to get you drunk. 367 00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:10,840 And it was just, but it wasn't so much 368 00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:12,920 that it caused abdominal cramping 369 00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:14,480 with all the psych meds I was on. 370 00:13:14,480 --> 00:13:16,520 So that was my recipe, man. 371 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:19,080 And I would just drink, and I ruined everything in my life. 372 00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:20,720 What that was capable of being ruined. 373 00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:22,600 I got kicked out of high school at the beginning 374 00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:25,120 of 11th grade, sent to the special kids continuation 375 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:26,120 bad kids school. 376 00:13:26,120 --> 00:13:27,760 They only, I only lasted two months there, 377 00:13:27,760 --> 00:13:28,880 and they kicked me out of that. 378 00:13:28,880 --> 00:13:30,720 You know, then I got sent to independent studies, 379 00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:32,120 and I got kicked out of that. 380 00:13:32,120 --> 00:13:34,720 And then finally, I wasn't going to do homeschool. 381 00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:36,360 So I walked into AA with the beginning 382 00:13:36,360 --> 00:13:37,840 of an 11th grade education. 383 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:41,440 I read many wordy books and engaged in windy arguments. 384 00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:43,680 I could tell you all about the ancient Egyptians, 385 00:13:43,680 --> 00:13:46,600 but I couldn't tell you Jack or S-H-I-T 386 00:13:46,600 --> 00:13:50,720 about staying sober, about interpersonal relationships, 387 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:53,040 about vulnerability, about transparency, 388 00:13:53,040 --> 00:13:56,040 about open-mindedness, honesty. 389 00:13:56,040 --> 00:13:58,120 I remember the first time someone in AA told me 390 00:13:58,120 --> 00:13:58,960 I was arrogant. 391 00:13:58,960 --> 00:13:59,800 I was like, me? 392 00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:02,160 I was, I didn't really understand arrogance. 393 00:14:02,160 --> 00:14:03,240 I was like, me? 394 00:14:03,240 --> 00:14:04,080 Are you kidding me? 395 00:14:04,080 --> 00:14:05,760 You're arrogant for even saying that. 396 00:14:05,760 --> 00:14:08,200 And I fought with everyone too. 397 00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:10,240 I mean, I fought tooth and nail. 398 00:14:10,240 --> 00:14:13,840 And so if you're one of those antagonists in AA, I get it. 399 00:14:13,840 --> 00:14:16,280 I thought this place was a Stepford wife. 400 00:14:16,280 --> 00:14:18,520 It was like therapy for porphy, you know, 401 00:14:18,520 --> 00:14:19,720 or without insurance. 402 00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:21,880 Like you just come here, you coddle each other 403 00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:23,440 over your petty emotional achievements 404 00:14:23,440 --> 00:14:26,160 in an unthinking universe destined for deep death. 405 00:14:26,160 --> 00:14:28,200 And you just pretend like the fact 406 00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:31,080 you got your driver's license at 42 years old 407 00:14:31,080 --> 00:14:31,960 is worth something. 408 00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:33,680 And that's how I'd share, you know? 409 00:14:33,680 --> 00:14:35,800 And they'd be like, yeah, I was just, 410 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:37,000 I needed to be potty trained 411 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:38,520 when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. 412 00:14:38,520 --> 00:14:40,160 I pissed the bed a lot when I was drinking. 413 00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:41,680 I don't know if there's any other bedwetters, 414 00:14:41,680 --> 00:14:43,480 but I peed every night. 415 00:14:43,480 --> 00:14:45,320 I mean, every night I'd pee myself. 416 00:14:45,320 --> 00:14:46,360 And I just got used to it. 417 00:14:46,360 --> 00:14:48,000 And I peed myself. 418 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:50,680 I ruined free mattresses in my sober living 419 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:51,960 because I kept pissing myself. 420 00:14:51,960 --> 00:14:54,360 My body was just used to unloading 421 00:14:54,360 --> 00:14:55,200 in the middle of the night. 422 00:14:55,200 --> 00:14:57,800 And that's the guy who came to AA. 423 00:14:57,800 --> 00:15:00,720 That's Josh, Josh Standifer, 18 years old. 424 00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:02,960 I'm a musician, I'm destined for great things. 425 00:15:02,960 --> 00:15:06,040 And then what happens eventually is you turn 21 426 00:15:06,040 --> 00:15:07,520 and you realized you were gonna kill yourself 427 00:15:07,520 --> 00:15:08,440 by the time you're 21. 428 00:15:08,440 --> 00:15:09,280 What do you even do? 429 00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:10,640 What am I supposed to do now? 430 00:15:10,640 --> 00:15:13,120 And I'm sitting here 20 years later, I'm 38 now. 431 00:15:13,120 --> 00:15:15,280 And a lot has happened. 432 00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:16,280 So much has happened. 433 00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:19,840 I remember, I thought that the all-male sober living home 434 00:15:19,840 --> 00:15:22,160 was like a Stepford Wives assembly line. 435 00:15:22,160 --> 00:15:24,480 This thing, like they ordered them from China, 436 00:15:24,480 --> 00:15:25,640 popped all these kids out 437 00:15:25,640 --> 00:15:27,040 and they just all said the same thing. 438 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:28,360 You know, I'm being my brother's keeper. 439 00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:29,280 I'm being honest. 440 00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:30,800 I have a relationship with my parents now. 441 00:15:30,800 --> 00:15:32,360 And they just go in the closet at night 442 00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:33,960 and sit down on their porch. 443 00:15:33,960 --> 00:15:36,280 And then they just get orders from the mothership 444 00:15:36,280 --> 00:15:39,120 the next day to come walking out, say the same thing. 445 00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:41,440 Easy does it, next time I'm up on gas. 446 00:15:41,440 --> 00:15:43,840 And I was just really cynical 447 00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:45,000 'cause I'd grown up in a church. 448 00:15:45,000 --> 00:15:46,120 I'd seen the pageantry. 449 00:15:46,120 --> 00:15:48,120 I'd seen the tithe, right? 450 00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:50,520 And I see what you're passing around in this basket 451 00:15:50,520 --> 00:15:52,120 and you call it the seventh tradition, 452 00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:53,800 but it's no tithe when I see it. 453 00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:57,600 And I was just sardonic and hard to get through to, 454 00:15:57,600 --> 00:15:58,840 hard to get through to. 455 00:15:58,840 --> 00:16:01,160 And yet the love of Alcoholics Anonymous 456 00:16:01,160 --> 00:16:02,000 pierced through that. 457 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,320 Slowly but surely, people thought I was funny. 458 00:16:04,320 --> 00:16:06,760 So I would just go on a tirade, you know? 459 00:16:06,760 --> 00:16:09,520 This is before podcasts existed, you know? 460 00:16:09,520 --> 00:16:11,600 But I'd go on a tirade and people would just laugh 461 00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:12,880 and laugh and laugh. 462 00:16:12,880 --> 00:16:15,240 And I would start to laugh too after a while, right? 463 00:16:15,240 --> 00:16:18,320 It turned from anger to kind of a standup comic routine. 464 00:16:18,320 --> 00:16:20,040 And that was healing. 465 00:16:20,040 --> 00:16:22,520 It was healing to laugh at how messed up my life had become. 466 00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:24,160 And to just kind of be like, yeah dude, 467 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,040 but at least we're still alive, you know? 468 00:16:26,040 --> 00:16:28,680 And I started that gallows humor carried me 469 00:16:28,680 --> 00:16:30,840 through the first year of my sobriety. 470 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:33,600 And my sponsor, I went through three or four 471 00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:35,480 before they appointed me one in the house. 472 00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:37,560 'Cause I do this one, two, three steps, 473 00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:39,040 four step, no thanks. 474 00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:41,120 And mostly 'cause I was lazy, 475 00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:43,800 I wasn't afraid of the self-searching or anything like that. 476 00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:46,800 I'm just lazy, I'm an idea guy, you know what I mean? 477 00:16:46,800 --> 00:16:48,000 Halfway, thank you brother. 478 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,920 And I'm an idea guy, but you need worker bees out there 479 00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:52,600 actually swinging the hammers, you know? 480 00:16:52,600 --> 00:16:54,280 Put me up in the air conditioned office 481 00:16:54,280 --> 00:16:56,200 and I'll make sure and tell you how it all goes. 482 00:16:56,200 --> 00:16:59,120 I could play a good foreman, but not a very good trenchman. 483 00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:02,400 And I finally got appointed this guy 484 00:17:02,400 --> 00:17:04,400 who was like the antithesis of myself. 485 00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:06,560 He was a jock from Poway, California. 486 00:17:06,560 --> 00:17:10,680 You know, good looking, tall, muscular, just this big guy. 487 00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:12,600 And he was the kind of guy I'd get in a fistfight 488 00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:13,440 in high school with. 489 00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:15,400 And he was my sponsor and he took me 490 00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:16,800 through my first nine steps. 491 00:17:16,800 --> 00:17:20,880 And then I graduated that house, somehow by some miracle, 492 00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:23,600 I went through the whole program and I just didn't leave. 493 00:17:23,600 --> 00:17:26,240 I thought about it a thousand times and I pulled stunts. 494 00:17:26,240 --> 00:17:28,000 I don't know if you guys ever pull stunts, 495 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:31,400 emotional stunts to like, pull a big stunt 496 00:17:31,400 --> 00:17:32,800 just to see if they care about you. 497 00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:34,120 It kind of goes like that. 498 00:17:34,120 --> 00:17:36,600 Pull a big stunt just to see if they care about you. 499 00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:38,360 Kind of the emotional and the immature stuff 500 00:17:38,360 --> 00:17:42,000 that children do, except you're trapped in an adult's body. 501 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,400 I remember a couple of times I would pretend to run away 502 00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:46,800 from the recovery house and I'd hide on the roof 503 00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:48,080 and I'd watch him all go up 504 00:17:48,080 --> 00:17:49,800 in the neighborhood looking for me. 505 00:17:49,800 --> 00:17:52,720 And I remember one time that the manager saw me up. 506 00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:54,840 They're like, Josh, are you on the roof? 507 00:17:54,840 --> 00:17:56,720 You know, get the hell down. 508 00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:58,400 And I'm like, no, you know? 509 00:17:58,400 --> 00:18:00,560 And he's like, Josh, come on, man. 510 00:18:00,560 --> 00:18:01,720 Look, let's talk about it. 511 00:18:01,720 --> 00:18:03,880 They say, this is a selfish program. 512 00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:05,640 'Cause I'd heard this in the media, you know? 513 00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:07,600 Like the only reason you're gonna help me 514 00:18:07,600 --> 00:18:10,480 is 'cause it'll help you stay sober, you know? 515 00:18:10,480 --> 00:18:13,040 And I just was like that a lot. 516 00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:16,720 Just grandiose, over the top, emotionally immature 517 00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:20,200 and really, really sad and really, really lonely 518 00:18:20,200 --> 00:18:22,880 and really, really afraid of showing you who I really was 519 00:18:22,880 --> 00:18:24,760 because I did not think that was good. 520 00:18:24,760 --> 00:18:27,400 And Alcoholics Anonymous worked on me 521 00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:29,760 and I got another spot and soon I left that house 522 00:18:29,760 --> 00:18:32,000 and I got a sponsor who was really working the steps. 523 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,200 And we got into the book and then I found the answer. 524 00:18:34,200 --> 00:18:36,760 Now I have the holy white light at Bill Wilson 525 00:18:36,760 --> 00:18:38,240 coursing through my veins. 526 00:18:38,240 --> 00:18:41,720 And I was out there exercising the demon of alcoholism, right? 527 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:44,400 We went through the book, the 12 and 12, the service manual. 528 00:18:44,400 --> 00:18:45,800 That's the big sleeping pill. 529 00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:49,480 A lot of people in AA sometimes complain about insomnia. 530 00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:52,880 Read the service manual, problem solved. 531 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:55,560 And I started sponsoring a ton of guys 532 00:18:55,560 --> 00:18:57,080 and listening to a ton of fist steps. 533 00:18:57,080 --> 00:18:59,520 And I felt like, I looked around at AA and thought, 534 00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:01,200 man, most of you old timers are lazy. 535 00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:02,280 You're easy, doesn't it? 536 00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:04,480 Your way from the meeting back to your house 537 00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:06,320 and you're not doing anything with these guys. 538 00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:07,640 I'm doing couch commitments. 539 00:19:07,640 --> 00:19:09,800 I'm ripping people's keys out of their hands 540 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:12,320 and giving them more juice and honey while they got DTs. 541 00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:15,840 And I had one guy whose arm had ballooned up 542 00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:18,240 from cellulitis sleeping on my couch. 543 00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:20,880 Like just growing up in my car 544 00:19:20,880 --> 00:19:22,520 on the way to get them into a hotel, 545 00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:24,680 just doing the Lord's work in AA. 546 00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:28,240 And I got this spiritual ego that just got big 547 00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:29,480 and it almost killed me. 548 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:32,640 I got so lonely, I judged all of you fornicators 549 00:19:32,640 --> 00:19:36,360 and energy drinkers and gamblers and alcoholics anonymous. 550 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:38,400 And while I was just sitting there 551 00:19:38,400 --> 00:19:40,320 trying to work a good program, 552 00:19:40,320 --> 00:19:41,960 I was staying away from the newcomer women. 553 00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:43,640 I was straight laced. 554 00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:48,040 And well, really, what I discovered in an inventory 555 00:19:48,040 --> 00:19:49,560 after I left that fellowship, 556 00:19:49,560 --> 00:19:52,920 that fringe fellowship within Alcoholics Anonymous, 557 00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:55,000 and I had my spiritual ego death, 558 00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:57,640 is that I wanted to sleep with all the newcomer women. 559 00:19:57,640 --> 00:19:59,400 Every single one of them I wanted to sleep with. 560 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:01,800 And they'd be safe with me, you know, I'm a good guy. 561 00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:04,600 But looking spiritual was not important to me 562 00:20:04,600 --> 00:20:05,800 in the social currency. 563 00:20:05,800 --> 00:20:08,120 And so I would rather spend my time 564 00:20:08,120 --> 00:20:10,320 looking spiritual than sleeping with newcomers. 565 00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:12,760 And when I broke down all of my judgments, 566 00:20:12,760 --> 00:20:16,480 I came to find that most all, every time I was the thing 567 00:20:16,480 --> 00:20:19,080 in me was a secret that resembled the thing 568 00:20:19,080 --> 00:20:20,520 I was judging in the world. 569 00:20:20,520 --> 00:20:22,560 That it's easier to burn the monster in the street 570 00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:24,600 than it is to confront the monster in the mirror. 571 00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:29,600 That if this was World War II Circuit 1939 in Germany, 572 00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:31,400 I might not be the one hiding people 573 00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:32,760 in the basement or the attic. 574 00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:34,360 I might be the guy with the armband. 575 00:20:34,360 --> 00:20:35,560 That I'm capable of that. 576 00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:38,400 And I'll tell you what, you'd think that the secret 577 00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:41,760 to human judgment is accepting the judgment, but it's not. 578 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:44,440 It's accepting that that thing is inside of me 579 00:20:44,440 --> 00:20:46,280 and learning how to love the ugly pieces 580 00:20:46,280 --> 00:20:48,280 that society tells me I shouldn't have. 581 00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:51,480 Learning how to make enough room for all of me to exist. 582 00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:54,200 There's been the secret to learning how to give love 583 00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:56,720 and patience to the rest of the world around me 584 00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:57,880 and to forgive quickly. 585 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:00,240 There's no Buddhist outage that if you want a happy horse, 586 00:21:00,240 --> 00:21:01,120 give it a large feel. 587 00:21:01,120 --> 00:21:02,960 And I have learned to do that with myself. 588 00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:04,640 And as a result of doing it with myself, 589 00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:06,440 I do it with a lot of people. 590 00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:08,920 You know those types in AA, I was one of those. 591 00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:11,120 Coffee pot goes on the left side of literature. 592 00:21:11,120 --> 00:21:13,160 Not the right side, it's the left side every week. 593 00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:14,840 Get it together, Rick. 594 00:21:14,840 --> 00:21:18,960 I was just a micromanager and that still lives in me. 595 00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:19,980 It's still there. 596 00:21:19,980 --> 00:21:21,980 And that'll start revving up. 597 00:21:21,980 --> 00:21:24,320 And then I just kind of laugh it off and back off 598 00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:25,840 and just relax, you know? 599 00:21:25,840 --> 00:21:30,040 And I am, when I was five years sober, 600 00:21:30,040 --> 00:21:31,200 four and a half years sober 601 00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:33,180 is when that spiritual ego burst. 602 00:21:33,180 --> 00:21:35,760 And my girlfriend had just broken up with me. 603 00:21:35,760 --> 00:21:37,100 She was drinking again. 604 00:21:37,100 --> 00:21:38,580 I was in a relationship with a newcomer 605 00:21:38,580 --> 00:21:40,020 and then she left me again. 606 00:21:40,020 --> 00:21:41,200 I was going to Al-Anon. 607 00:21:41,200 --> 00:21:42,480 I was trying to hold it together. 608 00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:44,240 I was sponsoring half the goddamn room. 609 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:46,560 And I didn't feel like my life was together. 610 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:48,160 I didn't feel like I had a deep relationship 611 00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:49,200 with my sponsor. 612 00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:52,160 I had just yet another man in a position of authority 613 00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:53,920 telling me what was wrong with me every day. 614 00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:55,840 Like I had my whole life, every principle, 615 00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:58,900 every cop, every, you know, all of them, 616 00:21:58,900 --> 00:22:00,680 just telling me what's wrong with me. 617 00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:03,660 My sober living that was basically behavioral modification, 618 00:22:03,660 --> 00:22:04,700 telling me what's wrong. 619 00:22:04,700 --> 00:22:06,360 And I called Bill Cleveland crying. 620 00:22:06,360 --> 00:22:07,520 And I was four and a half years sober. 621 00:22:07,520 --> 00:22:08,360 It was a Wednesday night. 622 00:22:08,360 --> 00:22:09,800 He invited me back to his house. 623 00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:10,720 He said, "Come over, man." 624 00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:11,720 And it was 10 o'clock at night. 625 00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:12,720 It's an old guy, you know? 626 00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:14,280 I was like, it was kind of forward. 627 00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:15,120 I said, "All right." 628 00:22:15,120 --> 00:22:17,160 And I came over there and I was crying in his basement. 629 00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:18,040 I was waiting for him. 630 00:22:18,040 --> 00:22:20,120 And I knew I was gonna ask Bill Cleveland to sponsor me. 631 00:22:20,120 --> 00:22:22,000 So I was waiting for him to bark the orders. 632 00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:23,160 I was waiting for him to say, 633 00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:25,800 "Open up to page 68," you know? 634 00:22:25,800 --> 00:22:28,800 Or, "Open up to page 86," or, "Open up," you know? 635 00:22:28,800 --> 00:22:31,240 Or, "When's the last time you did an inventory? 636 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:32,480 What's your mens look like? 637 00:22:32,480 --> 00:22:33,880 How many people are you sponsoring? 638 00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:35,620 How many meetings a week are you going to?" 639 00:22:35,620 --> 00:22:38,320 I was waiting for the interview to help reveal 640 00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:41,420 the causal reason that the effect was taking place 641 00:22:41,420 --> 00:22:44,800 in my life as people had tried to prescribe spirituality 642 00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:47,040 to me up until that point in Alcoholics Anonymous. 643 00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:49,480 And what Bill did is Bill held my shoulders. 644 00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:50,680 Big guy, Bill's huge. 645 00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:52,360 And he's like, "You're okay. 646 00:22:52,360 --> 00:22:53,560 You're one of the good guys. 647 00:22:53,560 --> 00:22:54,400 You're okay." 648 00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,280 And it slipped beneath my consciousness, my intellect, 649 00:22:57,280 --> 00:22:59,400 all my bards, the porcupine quills. 650 00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:00,740 It went right into my heart. 651 00:23:00,740 --> 00:23:03,040 And up until that point, I thought sobriety. 652 00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:04,500 And I go until five 'til, you said? 653 00:23:04,500 --> 00:23:05,680 - Great. - Up until that point, 654 00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:07,600 sobriety had been additive. 655 00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:09,520 It had been this thing that we're missing. 656 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:10,340 We're broken. 657 00:23:10,340 --> 00:23:12,900 We come in here like half-crushed cockroaches, 658 00:23:12,900 --> 00:23:15,800 praying that maybe we'll get to live half a life, you know? 659 00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:18,660 'Cause we're like cockroaches who've lost their legs too. 660 00:23:18,660 --> 00:23:20,060 We'll never grow new ones. 661 00:23:20,060 --> 00:23:22,660 But I feel like sometimes that mind at that gets spread out 662 00:23:22,660 --> 00:23:24,680 into the material world as well. 663 00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:27,200 I guess since I'm a drunk and I'm only worth this much, 664 00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:28,800 I'm never really gonna achieve anything 665 00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:30,560 other than just come into the meetings 666 00:23:30,560 --> 00:23:32,080 five to seven times a week. 667 00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:34,200 I feel like maybe I'll never try to take a risk 668 00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:35,180 in a professional life, 669 00:23:35,180 --> 00:23:37,880 or I'll just settle for whoever loves me. 670 00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:39,000 Because deep down inside me, 671 00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:40,960 I got these slivers that go all the way into the meat 672 00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:42,640 where I don't believe I'm worthy of love. 673 00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:44,240 You know, I've got all these problems. 674 00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:46,980 And I think that Alcoholics Anonymous is gonna be the solve 675 00:23:46,980 --> 00:23:48,660 that helps me live with it, right? 676 00:23:48,660 --> 00:23:50,000 I realized in that moment 677 00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:52,120 and through the next experience of several years 678 00:23:52,120 --> 00:23:53,040 that that's untrue. 679 00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:54,040 That's not true. 680 00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:57,520 Alcoholics Anonymous is a program of subtraction, 681 00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:58,360 not addition. 682 00:23:58,360 --> 00:23:59,600 We're not missing things. 683 00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:00,440 We have too many. 684 00:24:00,440 --> 00:24:02,640 And they're all untrue most of the time. 685 00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:04,900 And what happens when you're drinking and you're using 686 00:24:04,900 --> 00:24:06,920 is you have to adopt certain life philosophies 687 00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:09,000 in order to survive the alcoholic environment. 688 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:10,840 You have to learn how to lie, cheat, and steal 689 00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:12,040 if you're gonna be any good at drinking. 690 00:24:12,040 --> 00:24:13,080 You have to do that. 691 00:24:13,080 --> 00:24:14,640 And that's how you survive. 692 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:16,020 And when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, 693 00:24:16,020 --> 00:24:17,120 it's a brand new environment. 694 00:24:17,120 --> 00:24:19,680 The organism must adapt to that environment. 695 00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,800 And the adaptive advantage within AA is communal. 696 00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:23,900 It's together. 697 00:24:23,900 --> 00:24:24,780 It's all of us. 698 00:24:24,780 --> 00:24:25,680 It's being honest. 699 00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:26,660 It's being transparent. 700 00:24:26,660 --> 00:24:29,520 It's making your true problem available 701 00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:33,760 for the surplus of experience to offer solution, right? 702 00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:35,140 We need each other here. 703 00:24:35,140 --> 00:24:36,840 And it's a totally different game plan. 704 00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,720 It's like, it's the difference between a bureaucratic, 705 00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:43,200 state-run organization and a nimble startup. 706 00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:45,040 Two totally different business models. 707 00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:48,880 And so I realized that the God-shaped hole 708 00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:50,400 I've been sharing about for five years, 709 00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:52,820 we all have a God-shaped hole, was an illusion. 710 00:24:52,820 --> 00:24:53,800 That there is no hole. 711 00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:55,200 The hole exists in the mind, 712 00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:56,560 which is why nothing ever fills it. 713 00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:57,520 It's an illusion. 714 00:24:57,520 --> 00:25:00,880 And self manifested in various forms is what defeats us, 715 00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:02,200 according to the literature. 716 00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,040 And that is why the self regenerates 717 00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:05,360 the longer you stay sober. 718 00:25:05,360 --> 00:25:07,460 All of a sudden, you're a spiritual guru like me 719 00:25:07,460 --> 00:25:10,280 at four years sober, sponsoring half the room. 720 00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:13,360 Or you become a gambler, or you become a sex addict, 721 00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:18,360 or you become a food addict, because the ego changes rooms. 722 00:25:18,360 --> 00:25:20,880 Alan Watts has the cops and robbers. 723 00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:22,720 It's a game of cops and robbers with your ego. 724 00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:23,920 Cops come into the first floor, 725 00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:25,960 robbers run onto the second floor. 726 00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:27,200 Cops come onto the second floor, 727 00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:28,680 robber runs onto the third floor. 728 00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,360 Over and over and over again, like a skit. 729 00:25:31,360 --> 00:25:33,740 And when I realized that there was no hole in me, 730 00:25:33,740 --> 00:25:35,680 that I was already complete, and that in fact, 731 00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:38,880 I just had a bunch of things I'd learned to protect myself 732 00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:41,160 so that I could survive the hostility 733 00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:42,600 of an alcoholic lifestyle. 734 00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:43,560 There was hope for me. 735 00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:44,760 I thought, now check it out. 736 00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:46,020 There's like three major things 737 00:25:46,020 --> 00:25:47,520 that happen to every person in their life. 738 00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:48,640 I'm just gonna say three. 739 00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:51,640 Me, my father dying when I was 10 years old, right? 740 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,520 Getting beaten during the psychologically developmental years 741 00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:55,360 of my life. 742 00:25:55,360 --> 00:25:57,800 And maybe my mother, the only one I have left tricking me 743 00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,420 and putting me in a mental institution for a year, right? 744 00:26:00,420 --> 00:26:02,400 If either one of those things would, 745 00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:04,440 and she didn't know what to do, I was in terror. 746 00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,000 All the doctors were sitting my mother down and saying, 747 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:08,880 have you heard of a guy named Ted Bundy? 748 00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:10,160 You have to do something 749 00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,040 to engage this kid's antisocial behavior, 750 00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:14,720 or he's gonna hurt people, you know? 751 00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:15,660 She didn't know what to do. 752 00:26:15,660 --> 00:26:16,840 And I was a terror. 753 00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:17,720 When I was 10 years old 754 00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:19,720 and the Heaven's Gate people chopped their nuts off 755 00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,060 and did all that stuff, I was in thralls. 756 00:26:23,060 --> 00:26:25,760 I got, I cut out all the news articles 757 00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:28,320 and pasted them onto a poster board and hung it on my wall. 758 00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:31,220 You know, my mom took all the knives out of the house. 759 00:26:31,220 --> 00:26:35,360 You know, like I was not a cute cuddly little furry friend, 760 00:26:35,360 --> 00:26:36,200 you know? 761 00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:37,280 - I like baseball. 762 00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,080 - You know, I'm like, I like colts. 763 00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:42,760 You know, so, but what has happened since then is that, 764 00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:44,740 so if you were to remove one of those three formative 765 00:26:44,740 --> 00:26:47,160 elements in my life, would I be the same person? 766 00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:48,000 Would you? 767 00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:49,760 You probably have three things that happened to you. 768 00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:50,680 Think about it. 769 00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:52,860 If all three of those things never happened, 770 00:26:52,860 --> 00:26:53,840 who would you be today? 771 00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:55,440 And the purpose of this thought experiment 772 00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:56,960 is to lead one to the conclusion 773 00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:58,880 that the answer is you'd be someone different. 774 00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:00,440 And so if you'd be someone different 775 00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,000 absent those causes, then your personality 776 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:05,160 is a lot more flexible than you probably thought it was. 777 00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,080 And that maybe your identity is a little bit circumstantial. 778 00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:09,820 And in essence, if you keep on following 779 00:27:09,820 --> 00:27:11,920 that train of thought, that crap, 780 00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:13,880 all the stuff I defend and think and believe 781 00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,600 is kind of only relatively true, 782 00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:18,480 not really fully true like I think it is, 783 00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:20,080 like I defend myself in the world, 784 00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:21,720 the mind can begin to open. 785 00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:24,080 And if you open it totally, all the way, 786 00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:25,880 include everything, everything exists, 787 00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:27,760 everything's allowed, the whole ride, 788 00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:29,000 all of us, a little bit. 789 00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,800 And so if it's all BS, I came to think, 790 00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,040 what if I just created new BS that helps me 791 00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:36,660 and helps those around me? 792 00:27:36,660 --> 00:27:38,960 What if I, we talk about old ideas, 793 00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,240 but we never define them in Alcoholics Anonymous. 794 00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,520 So I wrote down my old ideas and the way I used it 795 00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:45,600 was through the fear inventory and I'm gonna shut up soon, 796 00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:47,100 but I wanna talk about this. 797 00:27:47,100 --> 00:27:49,040 'Cause it was counterintuitive to me. 798 00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:50,720 I was out at a little men's retreat, 799 00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,120 four guys, five guys up in Maine on five islands 800 00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:56,040 out on this beautiful 1800s cottage 801 00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:57,400 that was haunted as hell. 802 00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,080 Stuff making noise in that place the whole time. 803 00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,360 And I was out on this tuberculosis ward 804 00:28:02,360 --> 00:28:04,640 that's like the open netting for the air 805 00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:06,400 because people used to get TB 806 00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:08,540 and they thought the moving air helped people. 807 00:28:08,540 --> 00:28:11,440 And so I'm out on this thing writing in a fear inventory 808 00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:13,920 and I had done the fear inventory the way Dr. Paul did it. 809 00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,160 I'd done the fear inventory where I just asked the questions 810 00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,100 where I see that self-will is the reason I have these fears 811 00:28:19,100 --> 00:28:21,360 and now that relying on God will lead me, 812 00:28:21,360 --> 00:28:23,060 I have financial insecurity 'cause every time 813 00:28:23,060 --> 00:28:25,800 I try to take my will into my own hands, I'm bad with money. 814 00:28:25,800 --> 00:28:26,640 Of course I haven't. 815 00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:29,040 Now the new God conscious and God centered way 816 00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,040 is to try to run my thinking through a higher power, et cetera 817 00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:33,820 when it comes to money, women, anything. 818 00:28:33,820 --> 00:28:35,580 I've done all that, but it didn't do much for me. 819 00:28:35,580 --> 00:28:37,600 So what I did instead is I wrote down a fear inventory 820 00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:39,980 and just felt intuitive like a lot of things in my life. 821 00:28:39,980 --> 00:28:42,240 Imagine this, imagine we have sensory organs 822 00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:43,080 that have shut off. 823 00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:44,960 Imagine that those are there still, 824 00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:46,220 that they're a part of us, right? 825 00:28:46,220 --> 00:28:49,120 The Aboriginals believe that there's the biggest 826 00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:51,560 and largest brain is in your gut, right? 827 00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,400 And the smallest and most inaccurate brain is in your mind. 828 00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,960 They call it nanduparu, at least one specific tribe. 829 00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,720 And that's also the word they reserve for a fishing net 830 00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,680 when it's too twisted and messed up to use it. 831 00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:03,060 They say that's nanduparu, throw it away. 832 00:29:03,060 --> 00:29:05,660 So I took my fear and so I'm afraid of love. 833 00:29:05,660 --> 00:29:06,500 That was one big fear. 834 00:29:06,500 --> 00:29:08,120 I'm sure everyone here has felt that 835 00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:10,480 or if you've ever inventoried that, I'm afraid of love. 836 00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:11,480 That's not a fear. 837 00:29:11,480 --> 00:29:14,000 The fear is the tip of the iceberg. 838 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,900 The true thing beneath the water is I believe 839 00:29:16,900 --> 00:29:18,120 I'm not worthy of love. 840 00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:19,560 It's a subconscious belief. 841 00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,120 And when I changed all my fears into beliefs that way, 842 00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:23,320 I created a new belief. 843 00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:25,160 I am love and am love. 844 00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:26,080 And I did that with everything. 845 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:28,380 Success, I believe I'm not worthy of success. 846 00:29:28,380 --> 00:29:32,680 Or, you know, I'm afraid to just be one of the crowd. 847 00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,680 I believe I'm not significant enough to make an impact. 848 00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,300 And then I created a new spiritual action 849 00:29:38,300 --> 00:29:41,360 or a spiritual idea and I started living my life like that. 850 00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:42,200 Why not? 851 00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:43,920 I've just established that everything I think 852 00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:46,100 is probably just circumstantial anyway. 853 00:29:46,100 --> 00:29:47,600 Why can't I play with it? 854 00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,680 And so that's the 20 years now today, I'll shut up. 855 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,520 I try to keep a good attitude. 856 00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:53,880 I try to be honest too. 857 00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,040 And sometimes my honesty embarrasses me 858 00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:57,920 'cause I was literally complaining to Mahash 859 00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:00,880 the whole of like in side notes, the whole way up here. 860 00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,380 Oh God, you know? 861 00:30:03,380 --> 00:30:05,340 And I don't want to be, but I'm complaining. 862 00:30:05,340 --> 00:30:07,000 It's a part of me, it happens. 863 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,880 But that doesn't stop the truth from coming through me 864 00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:11,000 the minute I show up. 865 00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:14,040 Doesn't stop God from using me the minute I show up. 866 00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,880 It's, and so if you're imperfect out there, 867 00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:19,280 you can still be used to spread the light. 868 00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:21,780 You can, there's no other way to be used to spread the light. 869 00:30:21,780 --> 00:30:23,860 The cracks are how the light bleeds through, huh? 870 00:30:23,860 --> 00:30:26,760 And last story and I'll shut up for real. 871 00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:28,360 It's about a certain simple attitude. 872 00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:29,840 That's what Alcoholics Anonymous is about. 873 00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:31,740 It's about taking this attitude with me. 874 00:30:31,740 --> 00:30:33,620 And the attitude is beautifully illustrated. 875 00:30:33,620 --> 00:30:34,800 There was this, there's this monk 876 00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:37,360 and this monk is walking and minding his own business. 877 00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,480 And here comes this ronin samurai. 878 00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:40,800 This is back in feudal Japan. 879 00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:44,000 This ronin is just, he's been sleeping in barns. 880 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,520 He's been drinking nonstop from his gourd. 881 00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:50,580 And he spins this monk around and says, 882 00:30:50,580 --> 00:30:53,040 "Monk, I want you to teach me about heaven and hell." 883 00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,200 And the monk looks up at him and narrows his eyes 884 00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:59,560 and says, "You with your greasy hair, with your rusted sword, 885 00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,360 you want me to teach you about heaven and hell?" 886 00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:05,760 And the samurai, no one talks to a samurai that way. 887 00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:09,960 He's so enraged and dishonored that he draws his sword. 888 00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,640 And just as he's about to chop this little monk's head off, 889 00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:13,820 he goes, "That's hell." 890 00:31:13,820 --> 00:31:16,480 And the samurai who almost just killed this monk, 891 00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:19,600 who sees this guy almost surrendered his own life 892 00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:21,760 to teach him this valuable spiritual lesson. 893 00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,920 His eyes fill with tears, he drops his sword, 894 00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:26,720 and he falls to his knees to back. 895 00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:29,240 And the monk leans down and touches his shoulder and says, 896 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:30,280 "And that's heaven." 897 00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:31,960 And that's the attitude we have to have. 898 00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:33,000 It doesn't matter. 899 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:34,440 We just, I'm humbled. 900 00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:36,880 I'm humbled by the life that Alcoholics Anonymous 901 00:31:36,880 --> 00:31:39,240 has given me, and I believe in giving it back. 902 00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:41,360 And I appreciate you guys letting me blah, blah, blah, 903 00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:42,360 and blow hot air. 904 00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:43,180 Thank you. 905 00:31:43,180 --> 00:31:46,100 (group chattering) 906 00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,040 Nailed it