Carin S. Step 4 - Step Series at Twelve Step House - 8/5/2025

Carin S. Step 4, Step Series at the Tuesday Night Step Group, Twelve Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 8/5/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. I'm Karen.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm an alcoholic Thomas. My sobriety date is September the eighth,
nineteen eighty eight, and next month I will hopefully celebrate
my thirty seventh year of continuous sobriety. I am what's
commonly referred to as a one chip wonder, came in
once and never left. I'd like to say that I
had something to do with it, but I know by

(00:22):
now that I had zero to do with it. So
haven'ty of you been coming to this step meeting since
we started this series? Good? Good, good, Okay, So just
to wrap up where we've been, we're all living in
the first step. Everybody who's in this dream lives in
the first step, which says that I'm powerless over alcohol
when I'm drinking it, and my life is definitely unmanageable
when I'm not. And I absolutely know the second part

(00:45):
is true without a doubt, because I haven't had a
drinking a very long time, and this week my life
appears to be unmadageable by me alone. So here we are.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So, I mean, I don't really know.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
What to do with that, except that you're come into
the second step, and we have to come to believe
in some thing. It really doesn't matter what it is.
They can call it.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
You know, AA is very good at renaming.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Things so that they look different, but they all need
the same thing. And so we have to come to
believe in something in the second step. It doesn't matter
what it is that is going to relieve us of
this craziness of living in the first step, because if
I am powerless over alcohol when I'm drinking it, and
my life is unmanageable when I'm not, then I'm screwed.
And so I need something in the second step that's

(01:27):
going to show me that's going to take me, that's
going to push me into places where I don't want
to go, so that I can somehow be restored, restoration,
rebuilt to some semblance of sanity. And then last week
we talked about how does that happen? Well, that's you
know where the kicker comes, because you have to make
a decision. You got to make a decision you're going
to do this. You got to make a decision that

(01:48):
you are going to take your life and your will
along with it. Although by the time I got to
step through, I don't really know what my will was
but my life and bring it over into the care
of something that you don't yet believe in. That is
very tricky. Well what's the alternative?

Speaker 1 (02:02):
We don't have the alternative. We have to do that
if we want to stay sober.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
And any of you who have come in multiple times,
and I wholly admire people that have come in multiple times,
understand that when you don't take that third step, when
you do that sort of BS thing that says, ooh,
it says make a decision, but I don't have to
do anything.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Welcome back to your white chip.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
When it says make a decision, you make a decision,
and you do something. You do something so that brings
us to step foward, which is oddly enough, when I
was sort of doing my kind of research on Step Forward,
I haven't been really good about bringing up the books,
so I hope you don't mind. But I'm a book
reader in my home. You know, I'm a twelve and

(02:42):
twelve devotee when I'm working with another sober alcoholic going
through the steps or with the big book. But when
I'm in front of a group of people, I can
only tell you how I did it. I can't tell
you how to do it, but I can tell you
what would worked for me. So one of the things
I find most interesting about Step four is the principles.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
And I don't know where they are here, maybe they're
nowhere in air.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
But you get the principle of courage after you do
step four. That's kind of a weird thing. Step four
says that we made a searching and fearless moral inventory
of ourselves. That alone would get me out the door.
That alone, searching, fearless, moral, all of those things you
want from me. And I don't know any idea how

(03:22):
to do that, and yet they tell me and the
principle and you get the principle after you do the step.
After you do this moral inventory, is that all of
a sudden, you have courage. So that started me thinking
about the difference between bravery and courage, and they are
two different things. So you have to be brave to

(03:43):
do the fourth step. And you know, bravery is like
the like, like the private in the army he's brave,
but the commander in the army he has courage because
the private is doing what's being asked of him and
he does not know what's going to happen at the end.
But the commanding officer who's asking you to do this,

(04:07):
he's courageous because he knows exactly what could happen at
the end. So when they tell us that we're going
to take the fourth step, we have to be brave
about it. Brave means that I'm into some place where
I have no idea what's going to happen. And I've
had and I had some instances with bravery before I
did the first of the fourth step, So what was
the first one? Being brave enough to find a sponsor.

(04:28):
That's the first act of bravery most of us do
in this program is to find a sponsor, because what
happens when you ask a sponsor to sponsor you and
they say no. It could happen. But we're so dumb,
bravely dumb that we ask some guy or some girl
who looks like they have what we want, who looks
like the person that's going to keep me sober, and they,
of course understand that they have nothing to do with

(04:49):
your sobriety. So when you ask them to be a sponsor,
it really doesn't matter whether they say yes or no.
I want to make that clear. They say no, go
find another one. They say yes, go work with this one.
It doesn't really matter, but I'm brave enough to do it.
So that's the first act of bravery. Second act of bravery,
which is much more private, is making making connections in

(05:12):
the program saying hello, having somebody call me by my name,
having me call you by your name gets harder as
you get older. By the way, I'm not so good
at it anymore. I mean, I know your face, but
I don't know your name and feel you used to.
But you know, that's an act of bravery, because what
happens if you don't say hello back.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
What happens if you don't care.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
What happens is you formulated opinions about me already. And
I was brave enough to ask you to have coffee
after the meeting. It's the worst thing that happens.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
You don't have coffee.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
You have coffee after another meeting.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
I'm you know, I know that I told you a
story about, you know, knocking out this guy in AA,
my friend winky Don, And you know he was part
of the elite in my meeting, really the elite, you know,
I'm sure they're in here somewhere, but he was part
of this group of elite guys who after the meeting
would go to the diner across the street.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
And they would at the diner, all six of them.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
And it's kind of like it's kind of like the
guys that sit outside when they smoke their cigars here
in that big circle. That's what they did. But they
used to do it in the diner because you could
smoke in those days. And they would come in the
diner and they would, you know, talk, you know, I
don't know wisdom with each other, who knows, but I
know that One day winky Don said to me, why
don't you come and meet us at the diner?

Speaker 1 (06:18):
And I really thought, I don't know. I was months sober,
months sober, and he was still reeling.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
For me decking him, and I really, yes, you want
to invite me? Yes, come, come, come. So I went
to the diner and I sat with these six old
men with decades of sobriety and thinking, what do they
want from me? That's how grandiose I was, that they
wanted something from me. And so they're talking round and around,
and finally, you know, winky Don turns around and he
says to me, careing, what do you want, and I thought,

(06:46):
this is my big chance. I'm gonna tell them what
I want. Well, for one thing, I want to stop
hitting people because I don't want to be hitting anymore.
And I want to try and stay sober. And I
don't want to be in this particular marriage.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
I need to get out of there.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
And my job is really not very good and I
need to get.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Paid more money. And I'm not a very good mother.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
And I don't know how I'm gonna put all this
stuff down to the fourth step because I don't really
like my son very much. And he said I met
from the menu. AA has loved me back in a
very special way, and it doesn't stop me from going
to the diner. And by the way, we have done
that to other people and said that exact same thing

(07:22):
and heard that exact same speech.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
So moving on to the fourth step. Here's the thing.
I'm gonna say things tonight.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
You're gonna disagree with you are, And if your sponsor
tells you to do it differently, listen to your sponsor.
I can only tell you what was taught to me
and how I did and how I was taught from
day one is that you only have to do the
steps once for.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Yourself, one time.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I've done them hundreds of times with other people working
the steps with them. But for me, I only had
to do one fourth step. That's it. That's very freeing.
By the way, this is not a judgment, this is
just what it is. I know people that I adore
in this program, they have good solid sobriety do a
fourth step every years. I'm time to pick that scam again,
time to bleed.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
A little bit again.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
But you have quite healed from all.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Of this, and they'll do a fourth step every year.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
In my experience, you do your fourth step once and
then if you have anything to take care of, it
will come up on the tenth step and you can
deal with it then. And the tenth step is for
the rest of your life. But I did one written
fourth step, so I want to tell you a little
bit about it. Oh. By the way, you really only
have to do it once. If you don't lie. If
you lie, you gotta go back. It's like you know, monopoly,
you gotta go all the way back.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
You know, you don't fast go, you don't get anything.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
You gotta go back. So you can't lie when you
do your fourth step, and you can't lie to yourself,
and you can't lie on the paper, and you can't
lie to the guy or the woman that you're talking to,
and you sure as hell.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Can't lie to God.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
But if you lie, you got to start again because
if you lie, and by the way, it tells you
right there the fifth step, you will drink again.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
It's a promise. It's one of the promises of AA.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
If you screw around with your fourth step and do
a half assed job on your fifth step, we guarantee
you you're gonna drink again. So when it came time
for me to do my fourth step, I was terrified.
I have to tell you, fear was my my gasoline, frankly,
and so I thought that if I did a fourth
step that was neat and tidy, that my sponsor wouldn't
really paid much attention as to what was on the page.

(09:10):
So I went out and got a big ream of
graph paper, you know that is like the paper with
the little boxes in it, and I started to do
my four step, and I put one letter in each
of the little boxes, because I thought that if I
presented him with this, you know, ream of paper, that
he would be so impressed with me that I had
taken all this time to do it, And of course
I did a thorough fourth step.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
So by the end, I was like.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Scratching all over the place. I was not in those
boxes at all. I was so desperate to get this
stuff out, you know, when we talked about that a
little bit last week. And why do we do a
fourth step? What's the point? What's the point? Why can't
I just tell you what's wrong with me? Why do
I have to write it down? Why do I have
to write it down and then do something with it
after it's written down? And I still have my fourth step,

(09:51):
by the way, It's buried, but I have it, and
I wrote part of it in code, and I can
write code, but I can't read code, and so that
part was kind of left off of what I was
doing in my step. But I still have this fourth
step in all my little graph boxes, you know. So
why do we do a fourth step? What's the point?
First of all, it's the first tangible act of surrender
that we do. The first tangible I take a pen

(10:14):
put it for me. It was easier. We didn't have
a computers, We don't have any cell phones. We did
have a computers, there wasn't any other day to do what,
any other way to do it but to write it
down on a piece of paper. And so there was that.
But the thing that got me was my sponsor. He said,
first of all, I want to tell you, I'm going
to ease you up a little bit. And for anybody
that hasn't done a fourth step, this eased me up
a little. He says, no wrong way to do it.

(10:35):
As long as you don't lie, you've done a correct
fourth step. You have done a thorough fourth step. You
have done a moral and fearless fourth step, as long
as what you write on the paper is true. If
I can't get any other point across to you tonight,
that's it. Because more people don't do the fourth step
at a fear of not doing it the right way.
What's the right way? How much has to be on there?

(10:55):
Do I go back to the womb? You know? Do
I start in high school? What do I do if
I've been abused early? Do I put that in there?
It doesn't matter. It's the act. It's the act of
doing something that your sponsor has asked you to do
that you absolutely know will make no difference to you
in the long run. But you're gonna do it anyway
because they say to do it, and when it's over,

(11:16):
you cannot believe the way you feel.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
That's what I was told.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
The only problem was when I did my fourth step,
I didn't feel anything. After I felt nothing, you know,
I just felt like, I put this stuff down and
after you read it, I have to shoot him. That's
how I felt that nobody should have the right to
know that much about me. And by the way, if
you're an alcoholic like me, and hopefully some of you are,
I had lots of different sets of friends because I
could not have any one set of friends that knew everything.

(11:42):
That is, no, no, no no. So if you came
into a room, you know you would know.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
Six things about me, you'd know ten things about me.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
My greatest fears that somebody would hold like a party
for me and they would invite everybody, and everybody would
know something else, and they'd put all the pieces together
and that would be the end of me. I mean,
that's how I felt about it going into the fourth step.
So I cannot tell you. As long as you don't lie,
there's no wrong way to do a fourth step. You
just start the other thing I want to put it

(12:08):
in here. I'm highly unpopular to say, but I'm going
to say it anyway, is that in this day and age,
this is the year twenty twenty five, I see a
lot of new alcoholics, not just young, but new alcoholics
downloading sheets from the internet and their guides to having
to do that you know, how to do the fourth step,
and their guides to what category is to do, and
lots of paper and you know, whatever works. So you

(12:29):
find this is how I did it. Your sponsor is
your guide. If your sponsor is not your guide, get
another sponsor. Your alcoholic next to you is your guide,
not some piece of paper that's written by we don't
know who that's being downloaded off the internet. I know
it's unpopular for me to say this, but the reality

(12:50):
is I go way back old school, one alcoholic listening
and talking and identifying to another alcoholic about what they
went through to get sober, what they want when they
were drinking, and this is how they got out of it.
And you stick with me. I'm going to show you
how to get out of it. I can't get that
from the internet. And so if your sponsor is handing
you your sheets get another sponsor.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
I'm sure that'll go down well.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
So I don't care. I don't care. All my sponsors
will tell you I don't care. They'll all give their vote.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
So here's the thing. Before you do the fourth step.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Interesting thing before you do the fourth step, make sure
you're connected to your third step. Can't really do a
proper fourth step unless you're connected to your third step.
Whatever that thing is that you chose to believe in
that was going to make a difference in your life
in the third step, latch onto that, latch onto that.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
And that's when I was given the prayer of my lifetime.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
This is all I've ever prayed for, all I've ever
prayed for in AA, I pray for clarity, and i'd
pray for courage, clarity to see things as they really are.
How was I really Because when you get to the
those funky columns in the fourth step and it's asking you,
you know, what did it affect in you? And then
we go to you know, the buzzwords, you know, whatever

(14:07):
they're using at.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
The time, you know, how did it really affect me?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
How it really affected me? So I wanted to kill you.
How did it really affect you? There, I wanted to die.
You don't see that in the big book. You don't
see that in those pages that you download, but you
see it in the eyes.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Of another alcoholic.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
And I need to know that the things that I
did that were so heinous.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
And believe me, I.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Did some little bad things, but most of the things
I did were very bad, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
And my very first sponsor, Albert, I honored.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
His living memory. And I only tell you the legal
things when I get up here, you know, he says,
just share the legal stuff, don't give them any ideas.
And so when I have to go into what happened
in my life and how I'm writing this down in
a fourth step, I need to know there's somebody on
the other end of this thing that's looking at me
that says, it's not so bad. It's not so bad.
Let me tell you what I did, let me tell
how I got out of there. So that's the most

(14:59):
important thing. I pray for, clarity to see me, to
see me for who I really am. And since we
suffer from a disease of perception, that's why I drank,
is to change the way things looked.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
It's hard, really hard for me to see.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Me who I am, mostly because I was riddled in
and out with fear. You know, I'm not an all
the person I am now. You know, it was then
that I am now, I don't even recognize this person
standing in front of you by the person that was there.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
I was ruled and riddled by fear.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
And now he's telling me that I have to make
a fearless and moral inventory. And then I heard the
words that I absolutely hate, and I've heard of my
whole soular life, which is just do it, just do it.
Nothing will happen to you if you just do it,
but plenty will happen to you if you don't, you know,
and if.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
You don't remember anything else, you just do it. That's it.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
So this disease of perception talks a lot about in
the book about how it, you know, it warps our
natural desires, and that it's a disease of war. And
it makes me laugh.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
It is a disease of war.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
You know. I had lunch today in this I don't
know what they call him, assisted living places with my
mother who doesn't know me anymore, and my son and
my brother, and you know, I was talking to my son,
who I adore, and he was the first person that
I put on my fourth step. And because I wasn't

(16:19):
sober when I gave birth and I wasn't a sober
mother for the first eighteen years of his life, and
things that happened to him he doesn't remember, but I
sure as hell you and so, you know, I look
at him and I'm talking about something, you know, and
I said to him, I'm so glad that I only
had like one kid. He goes, really why, And I
couldn't tell him the truth. I could tell you the truth,
But the truth is is that having one son was

(16:39):
the only time in my life I ever wanted one
of anything. I mean, that's the truth. I have a
disease of more. And I just I knew, I knew,
I knew that I could never handle more than this
one kid. And you know, he's almost forty, and he's
a great kid. And he went to AA you know
for eight years, not as an alcoholic, in a snugly

(17:00):
and in a stroller. I mean, I just dragged him
into these rooms because anything what else to do with them?
You know, needless to say, you know, in the eighties,
in the early nineties.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
When you came into AA.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
And if you admitted your alcoholic andre and refused to
go to treatment center, which he did, often, they would
take your kids. So you had to be really careful
with the way you were handling yourself and shout out again.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
I have to do this every meeting.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
I will shout out to the women who bring their
children into the rooms of AA, you know, and shout
out to the men who give them shout outs when
they come in, because there is nothing tougher than being
a single mother and schlepping your kid into a meeting
hoping you'll stay sober so you're a better mother. It
took me years, years to get over the damage that
was done to him in his first eighteen years until

(17:41):
I came eighteen months until I came into the.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Rooms of AA.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
So I want to talk a little bit about, you know,
how I did this fourth step because it was crazy,
it wasn't fabulous. It's on graph paper. I'm writing things
down that nobody knows about me. I don't yet know
what a fifth step means, and I do know from
a sponsor that you know, people around me got to
be careful about those people around me that say, you

(18:05):
know you're going to surrender and do your fourth step.
By the way, the word surrender does not appear in
the Big Book. I'm not sure you realize that the
first one hundred sixty four pages ever appears not there.
You know what appears from the Big Book abandon yourself
to God, not surrender yourself.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
And there's a good.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Reason for that, because we're manipulators, we're deal makers. You know,
if you show me a surrender, I'm going to show
you a conditional surrender. I'm going to give a little
and take a little, and give it a little and
take a little bit. I'm not going to be all in.
Abandon yourself to God is flailing your arms out, falling
off the cliff and saying I know somebody will be
there to save me on the other side. That's what
we're talking about here. So I began with my resentments

(18:43):
and learn very quickly that self pity is a drug
for me. That was the worst one, feeling sorry for myself.
You know all of the time. You know, if you
had my life, you would drink too, If you had
my life, you would use to. And so I felt
sorry for myself, not realizing that the more I felt
sorry for myself the more I would feel sorry for myself.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
You can't get out of that.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
You can't get out of that. And by the way,
guess what, those sheets won't get you out of that either.
They will not get.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
You out of your pity party, but your sponsor will.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
But the man or the woman or the person that
you're doing the steps with, they'll get you out because
they felt sorry for themselves.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
So my problem was I came into a a.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
With a lot of baggage, a lot of fear, a
lot of self pity, and this habit that manifested itself
all different ways of I don't know, finding myself in
a hardware.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Store looking for ahead of lettuce.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
I spent my whole drinking life doing that. I would
wake up and I'm in a hardware store. Where's the lettuce?
You're in the wrong store. This was over and over
and over again. Whether I got married and some guy
that you know, she turned out to be the wrong guy.
What happened? I thought you were the right guy. You're
in the hardware store looking for ahead of lettuce. You know,

(19:56):
over and over and over again, all of my defects
came out, and they all came down to the same
thing I didn't want to get out of the hardware store.
It's my store, you know, Sandy Beach. I'm sure many
of you know them. He wrote, Drop the Rock. He
was an old friend of mine, lovely, lovely, lovely man,
and you know he used to talk about, you.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Know, drop the Rock.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
I'm not sure if you realized it, but when it
was first talked about, he cleaned up his act, but
he wasn't. He used to talk about it as a
turd and not a rock, because he thought we.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Would relate to shit better. Oh, I said a bad word.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Okay, So he thought we would.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
It's not the first lie, it probably won't be the last,
but he thought we would relate to that better. But
he would say things like, it's my turd, how important
that is to us as alcoholics, it's my defect. Don't
tell me to get rid of it. It's mine. And
that's how I wound up in the hardware store looking

(20:49):
for a LS, holding on to whatever I was supposed
to let go of.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
God, bless you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
So. The other thing that I want to talk about,
just a little bit that I brought into this for step,
but I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
About myself, my alcoholic and I'm fucked up over there. Wait, I'm, I'm,
I'm I know.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
We don't step towel man service.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
He's not the voll y'all. Man, I've got you when.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I called audio man.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
He has a step series, honestly whole, fake, honest courage.
I don't say spirit fuss that certain not full of
ship man. This serious, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
And that is why we don't download sheets, because there
is nothing like one alcoholic relating to another alcohol But
if you couldn't relate to this guy, you probably don't
need to be here, because that's how I came into
a a. I came into a yelling and screaming and
hitting people because you didn't understand me. Because my case

(22:06):
was different and his case was different. And we come
in here to understand and we learn a day at
a time. Then you're exactly like me. My case is
exactly like yours. I may look differently than you do,
but we all have the exact same disease here. So
I'm going to move on a little bit because one
of the things that I want to talk about is
the fact that I'm a runner. It was on my

(22:26):
defect lists and I'm still a runner. I don't run,
but I'm a runner. You know, I'm a runner in
my head. It's like I still smoke, but I don't smoke.
You know, I'm a smoker in my head. I'm a
former smoker. I'm a former runner, but I'm a runner.
And if there's one thing that my sponsor said you
would literally beat out of me was my running instinct.
Because there's nothing that we'll get an alcoholic drunk faster

(22:47):
than running. And I don't know if anybody can relate
to that. And I hope everything is okay out there,
because it's getting a little laud so somebody might take
a little action, Thank you guys. Okay, well you may
have to call the pool. Okay, somebody do me a favor,

(23:07):
make a phone call. He's all right, Okay, all right,
so we'll move on, and I apologize because maybe they
can cut all this out of the recording. Okay, we'll
close the door on that. Anyway, going back to your columns,
let's just get back to where we were for a moment.
Take a big deep breath and thank God that that's

(23:29):
not you there, but for the grace of God. Go
I you know, I'm not sure if some of you
remember this, because a lot of young people here, but
most of us when we came in the AAA did
not come in through treatment centers. We came in drunk,
and frankly, for me, I just love the smell of
a good alcoholic comes into and drunk. I still love that,

(23:52):
you know. I'll go back there and ask them how
they're doing it in a skinny minute. But I'm also
the girl that leaves the meeting and walks right into
that circle of people smoking cigarettes. I don't even know them,
ask them how they are because I love the smell
of the smoke. You know, I wish we still had this,
But you know, people get sober in treatment houses. They
come in and they don't enjoy what we used to
enjoy is the good smell of a drunk. You know,
when I got when I was sober in First Things First,

(24:13):
I know when I was sober in First Things First,
there was a little room called the Little Room held
thirty four people, and in the back of the room
was a big bathroom that we could all use. There
was no coffee, you had to bring your own, There
was no anything there. There wasn't actually a turtle on
the table, and it was the fourth step turtle, which
I love because the turtle is the only animal in
the Kingdom, including man, that has to stick their neck

(24:34):
out to go forward. And I've always loved that. Every
once in a while, some drunk would steal the turtle,
and then you know, we'd have no turtle, and then
they'd get sober and the turtle would miraculously, you know, reappear.
So in this room, you know, we learned how to
rely on each other, especially when things like this happens.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
We had we had.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Disruptions like this all the time. People would come in
and that's the way it was. And there was a
couple that used to come in and this New York remember,
so anything goes. He used to wear a suit out
of smashed pepsi and coke cans, you know, and they
were all see he made a lot of noise when
he moved. And she used to wear a hat with dress,
and she had dirt all over her.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
She had live flowers.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
That she had picked out of the park and had
stuck them all over her. So she was literally literally
dirty the entire time. And they would come and they
would sit in the back of the room and after
about ten minutes they would go in the bathroom and
they would be in there for almost an hour than
two of them, and when they came out, they were clean.
You know, they used the bathroom and they got clean. So,
because we're alcoholics, you know, we had to have a

(25:33):
business meeting about this because too many people had to
use the bathroom. And they had a business meeting and
they decided, much to my chagrin as a young alcoholic,
because I said, we need to make a rule so
they can't come in here anymore because it's disgusting. And
they made a decision.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
To build a bigger bathroom.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
So that more people could actually use the bathroom while
they were in there. So that's what AA is about.
I'm kind of just running through some things until we
get some peace and quiet in this room again. But
he can take a breath and we can move on
with the brilliance of doing a fourth step. Okay, So
I want to talk a little bit about the columns
that they do there. I don't know, depending on what
meeting you go to, whoever your sponsor is tells you

(26:13):
to like go horizontally, somebody else tells you to go vertically.
It's the only time that you know, really, it's the
only time that.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
I ever gave up.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
We didn't use the twelve and twelve for the fourth step.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
We took it right out of the big book, and.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
We did it exactly what they said, you know, and
my sponsor was a dave O ten. Just read the
black parts, don't interpret anything that they're saying.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Don't try to redo what they've done in here to
fit you.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
So whatever those columns are, you know, whether you know
it affected you, what you did, what your part was,
and all of those things. But you know, in the
book it talks about seven deadly sins, and you know,
I just say, nah, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
I did not grow up with the seven Deadly sins.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
I couldn't name them.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
I don't know what they are.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
I think I had far more than seven, and I
think that there were much worse, rougher.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Than the ones that they talked about in the book.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
But you know, I was told to guide myself by
the seven Deadly Sins, So you know, we did for
a little while. But you know, I didn't listen to
my assets either, even though it says in the book
somewhere in there that you know you should in the
twelve and twelve, by the way, it doesn't say it
in the Big Book. By the way, did you notice
in the Big Book, you know, it talks about progress,
not perfection all the time, and yet when you study
the twelve and twelve talks all about perfection. I always

(27:16):
found that interesting that in the Big Book there's no perfection.
In the twelve and twelve there's perfection. And so I
got sober and stayed sober with the Big Book.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
You know, I worked with other alcoholics.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
With the twelve and twelve, and so I'm not sure
what works with you, but you got to go with
whatever works for you. Anyway, when you get down to
those columns, you know, they're they're talking about the final
column in there, which was you know what my part
in it was? And I wasn't very happy about that.
I really didn't want to take responsibility for anything. And again,
get yourself good sponsored Well, tell you nothing's going to

(27:48):
happen to you if you put it down, nothing will
happen to you. If you talk about what your part
and it was, I had terrible parts in there said
nothing will happen to you.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
It will happen to you.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
If you don't put it down there, take that secret
with you, something absolutely will happen. But if you put it.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Down there, nothing will happen.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
So fear led the list. Fear guided me through every
single thing I did in my life. I got married
five times out of fear. Imagine that, five times out
of fear. You know, people laugh. You know, I have
somebody that loves me very much, tells me I'm in
love with being in love. That's not true. I was
afraid every single time. I was afraid, and I thought

(28:26):
this would cure me. And of course I was in
the hardware store and it never cured me. You know,
my third marriage, I actually loved him, and it will
talk about that later. But for the rest of them,
the other four, you know, I didn't love anybody.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
I could have walked in a heartbeat.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I'm a runner.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
I can walk.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
You know, you can tell me you love me a
million times. I can walk, and that's how it was.
I didn't because you know, you can't hit a moving target.
And when the going gets rough, the tough get going.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
And that's that's what I lived by.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
You know, the person that introduced me, you know, she
says something about me moving twenty one times in sobriety.
I moved many more times than that before sobriety. You know,
I moved. And I want to tell you that I
had a pattern, and this is what why people had
to put in my forest. If I had a pattern,
and I'd get an apartment, I always make money, and
need to tell you, not a good thing for an
alcoholic like me. But I always made a lot. I
didn't just make money. I made a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Not a good thing.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
So I'd find a great apartment and i'd move in there,
and you know, one day, I just I wouldn't make
the bed. I don't know why didn't make the bed.
We got to get back in, So I wouldn't make
the bed. And I go on my day, and every
day I would come home and I wouldn't make the bed.
And then one day, you know, I would come home
and say, you know, why do I have to do
the dishes? You know, I'm not trying to get somebody
else to do the dishes. What's the points?

Speaker 1 (29:34):
And then one day I would come home and there'd
be no dishes to do because they.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Were all filthy, and they were all in the in
the sink, and so I would go to the store
and i'd buy another set of dishes, you know, and
I would buy sheets, and I would buy clothing because
I didn't do my launch, because I didn't see the
point of that either.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
And then one day i'd look up and there'd.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Be a couple of people living there with me because
they thought it was a really good thing.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Nobody had to do any.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Chores, and we kept getting new things every week, and
you know, and they just loved it, you know. And
then I would turn around and there'd be somebody in
my bed and I wouldn't recognize them, but they had
assured me they've been there for quite some time, you know,
because I'm a blackout drinker and I don't really know
what's going on. And then one day I would wake
up and it was quite like I came too, and
I would turn around and I'd see people living in
my house. I'd see dishes I didn't recognize, clothing I

(30:15):
didn't recognize. And I did the only thing an alcoholic
would do. I picked up my person I left, and
I left every single thing I owned. And I didn't
do this once or twice. I did this over and
over and over again, and by the way, just for
good measure every time I did it and moved someplace else.
I changed my name. I changed my name, I changed
my social Security number, I changed my license, I changed
my college degree. I changed everything about me. I took

(30:38):
doing a geographic to an art for it literally an
art form. You know. Somewhere around eight years of sobriety,
I got a letter from the government that literally said, dear,
whoever you are, all, we want what you have and
we're willing to go to any length to get it.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
And you know, I didn't pay attention.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
I'm on the run. I'm on the run. And I thought,
after I had done all these steps that I was
a clean, good girl and everything goes good.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
I crossed it off. I forgot about this.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
And the reason I forgot about this when I tell
you don't lie, don't lie. I forgot about it because
they never came up and asked for it, so I
thought it had to have gone away. That's how we
think is alcoholis I'm eight years sober. I'd get this letter,
I turn around and save my sponsor. What do I do?

Speaker 1 (31:26):
She says, Well, they're telling you what to do.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
You gotta appear in this place, in this courthouse, at
this day, at this time, and she said, I'll go
with you. So she goes, and I'm looking at what's
going on there, and I'm thinking, if they nick me,
I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Jail, there's no question about that.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
And so there were four different places that I could
have gone. They have four different people in them, you know,
who were set to take care of you. And there
was this one woman at the end, had like blue
hair and those glasses, those cats eye glasses, and I
kept thinking, please God, not her, not her, anybody but her,
not her. And that's exactly who they gave me. And
I walked over to her and she said, you know,
is this your name? Yes? Is that your name? Yes?

(32:04):
Is this your name yes? On and on and on
she said did you do this? And did you do that?
And my sponsor said to me, why don't you go
through and talk to her and do something you're not
good at doing. Why don't you tell her the truth?

Speaker 1 (32:17):
So I just looked at her and I said, you know,
this is who I am.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
And I'm a sober member of Alcoholic Asynonymous, and I've
been sober for eight years.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
And I go to meetings every day, and I.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Sponsor other people, and I have a job, and I'm
a single parent, and this is my sponsor, and she's
sitting in the courtroom, and I know that I've done
something wrong, but I'm here to do my time for it.
She turned around and said to me, my son was
never able to get sober. She said, congratulations on your
eight years. Can you pay us back ten dollars a

(32:49):
month no interest. Now I'm not a brain surgeon, but
I already knew by that amount that I would be
paying them for more than two hundred years. And she
knew I'd be paying them for two hundred years. It
wasn't the point. The point was, she said, don't forget

(33:09):
and don't be late. And so for all of those years,
I paid it back until I made a lot of
money one year, and I paid all the rest of
it back, you know, in one big thing. But you know,
she taught me a lesson. She taught me a lesson,
a fourth step lesson that I didn't even remember and
didn't even realize. So by the time I got to
that last column where there's like a magic column in

(33:33):
there that maybe your sponsor knows about. But those sheets.
Don't know about it that you know, basically says she.
You know, what would you do differently if you were
in the same situation, knowing what you know? Now, what
would you do differently? And you know, the answer is easy,
by the way, I do the opposite of what I did.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
It's not brain surgery. I do the opposite of what
I did, and that's what that column would be.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
And he let it go. He goes, Okay, that's good.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Let's move on. And then came the lists, and the
lists good. You know, first of all, there was the
sex list. And you know, first I have to be
very honest with you. I'm a blackout drinker. I could
only tell you a certain amount. And after that, it's
just numbers. I have no idea. And you know she was.
She made me a very good woman, my sponsor. Instead

(34:19):
I'm asking who you had sex with, I'm asking you
who you had sex with to manipulate to get what
you want. It's a whole different thing. Men do it,
women do it. We all do it. And so I
had to do a sex inventory just doing that, which
was a relief to me because I really thought they
were gold.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Ask me how many people I slept with, and I
didn't know.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
You know, it was the eighties, it was the nineties.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
You know, it was just saying who I mean, it's just.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Yeah, I mean, that's all that it was. But I
could remember what I had done, I could remember who
I had manipulated, and so I, you know, wrote all
those things down.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
And then we got to the fearist.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
And I didn't understand why my entire fourth step was
riddled with examples of fear and what I did about
the fear, and what I had to do about the fear,
and how it infected my life everywhere. Why I had
to do a fearless He says, this is, this is
basic stuff. Take a piece of paper out, write down
every single thing you're afraid of.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
This is after I did my fourth step. Put it
all down.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Write down every single thing you're afraid of, no matter
how manyscuel it is. You know, I'm afraid of being well.
I'm afraid of being sick. I'm afraid of being married.
I'm afraid of being divorced. I'm afraid of living. I'm
afraid of dying. I'm afraid of getting the job. I'm
afraid of not getting a job. I'm afraid of waiting
to find out if I'm going to get the job.
You know, any anything that you can think of.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
I want the list.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
I have no idea. There were hundreds of things on
this list. And he said, now take that list. That
list is not going to God. That's your list, your
private list. Put it up on the refrigerator. And every
time you do something and one of those fears is
not president, I want you to cross it off.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Just cross it off the list.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
And as the years went on, the list looked like
a bunch of cross offs. And one day I looked
at it. There was nothing left on the list. Every
single fear have been crossed off. Doesn't mean that they
weren't replaced by other fears. But they're regular fears. They're
normal fears. There are things you should be afraid of.
They're not irrational fears. There is no waking up in
the morning and being afraid and you can't figure out

(36:14):
what it is that you're afraid of. You know, these
were normal things that you should be afraid of. But
the list was invaluable to me. It kept me on
my toes for a very long time. And you know,
I mean I lived alone, married, alone, married, nobody cared
about the list. You know, my husband's thought that it
was silly. I thought it was a life saver and
absolute life saver. So a couple more things that I

(36:38):
want to you know, blow out there with. You know,
they talk a lot about emotional insecurity, which who wants
to talk about that? Really, that's unzipped, that's your armors off.
You know, my emotional insecurities, worry, anger, self pity, depression,
you know, all of those things. The thing is this,
until I finished my fourth step and I started putting
all those things down and connecting them with people, they were.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Never gonna go away.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
We don't have these things by ourselves.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
We don't live in a vacuum.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
We like to think we do.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
You know, we're low snowbos, we're the lone wolf.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
But we're not. Every single one of these defects is
connected to somebody. It's not by ourselves. It's the acts
we perpetrate on other people. And you know, it took
me years, by the way, years and years to remember
some of the things that I had done. And that's
why I'm saying, you do the best job you can do.
On the fourth step, you write it all down, you
get it all out. Ten years later, twenty years later,
you might remember something that wasn't on there, and that's okay,

(37:30):
that's okay. That's what a tenth step is for. You know,
it's no coincidence that they tell you that you have
to do nine step amends for the rest of your life.
That's not because you're a bad person the rest of
your life. That's because we're alcoholics and we don't remember anything,
and so you're gonna remember things later on in your
life and you'll have to do those amends. And you know,
I've had the most extraordinary experiences meeting people that I

(37:50):
did terrible things too, you know, later on in sobriety
that I just never thought that I would have the
opportunity to say anything at else down, you know. And
we'll talk about making amends and all of that. But
what I'm saying is that the more you write down,
the healthier you're.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Going to bake.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
That's another thing I just I want to bring up
in the time we have. You know, sometimes I do
these talks and it reminds me of the things that
irritate me in AA and this is one of the
things that irritates me is that you see here somebody
in AA and they say, you know, you know, hi,
my name is Susan, you know, and I'm an alcoholic.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
I'm just as crazy as day I walked in.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
That's a lie. Don't let anybody with any time tell
you that in a room with alcoholics anonymous. From the
moment you get here, the moment you walk in and
you put that drink.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Down, you are well. You are well.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
And if you come back the next day, you're going
to be weller. And if you come back the next day,
you're going to be even more well than that. And
when that person comes in here with one day and
you have seven days and you say you're crazy as anything,
and I got one day, I'm out of here. We're
responsible for those people coming in. Whoever took that white
chips night. You know, you may have a chance of
staying sober, young man, And I'll tell you why, because

(38:54):
you've got a soda out there, just to make sure
that you could pay for it with a credit card,
and the first thing out of your mouth, I'm going
to give it away to somebody else. So you got
a shot of making it in here, Because that's what
we learn that when we give it away, that's what
makes us better. And so I will just say that,
no matter how long you're in here, I'm looking at
a room full of well people. And by the way,

(39:15):
I need you to be well. I need you to
be really well. I can't hang around you know, wax anymore.
I've done that for a long time.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
This is the way that is.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
So the last thing that I want to talk about,
and I've said this to you before, is that I
had a mentor in Clancy, and after I did my
fourth step and I was about to do my fifth step,
he in his clancy inimitable way, called me and said,
you're not done. He said, because for special people, that's
a lie.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
By the way he did this with everybody, he.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Said, for specialist people, I have a set of seven
questions I'm going to ask you, and if you didn't
cover them in your fourth step, you have to go back.
Some of us are lucky enough to have had this
happen to them, and so I'm going to read you
the seven questions because at the time they irritated me.
Now I think they're extraordinary. The first question, and he
asked me, in looking back over your life. What memories

(40:08):
are still guilty, still painful, or still dirty? Be as
thorough and specific as possible. It's pretty harsh. Question two today,
just today, in what ways do you feel inadequate as
a person? I'm like, he's killing me. He's killing me.
I've done this fourth step and he's literally killing me.

(40:30):
The number three, who do you still resent? Who do
you still resent? And tell me why? Set clearly says
that I left somebody off of there. I don't even
though I left anybody off there. The number four in
what ways? What do you conceive to be your defensive
character as you see them from where you are right now?
And by the way, don't trip up on this defective

(40:51):
character and character defects or all that. It's all the
same stuff. Bill's creative. It's all the same thing. Nothing
means anything different. Although I've heard a lot of old
timers come up with these scenarios that this means this
and this means that same thing.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
This is stuff we did that was bad.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
It's the stuff we don't want to have in us,
because once we.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Clear out all of this stuff, then God moves it.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Okay. Number five, who what is the nature of your
ongoing problems with the people around you. Hated that, And
where can you see any pattern? Where again and again
and again and again the same things come up. This
is after I've done my fourth step. Then he said

(41:31):
where did this come from? He said, what are your
goals in life? Realistic or not? I don't know about you,
but nobody really asked me. Nobody asked me other than
Don in the diner, who asked me what I wanted
and that turned out to be the menu. Nobody asked
me what I wanted. Nobody asked me what my goals were.
He asked me what my goals were. And then the

(41:52):
last question he asked was do you see anything that
you can begin to use in AA to start towards
any of these goals? Yes?

Speaker 1 (42:01):
I just love that, you know, because we're big on
looking outside of alcoholics.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Anonymous for the answers, But all the answers are in
the book. All the answers are in the big book.
All the answers are in the twelve and twelve. But
you're not going to see them until you they're down
on paper. You're just not going to see them. So
the couple of other things I want to say before
we close up is that I kept my fourth step.
I didn't keep it for any other reason other than
every once in a while I try to read it.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
And like I told you, I.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Wrote some of it in code, and I don't have
the whatever the decoder part is, so I don't really
know what I was talking about. It's in the less
neat parts of the graph paper. But I keep it,
and I advise you to keep it. You know, if
you do your one fourth step, I advise you to
keep it.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
You don't have to have it on display. It doesn't
have to be framed, just.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
So you know you did it, just so you know
you did it. So when you go to sponsor someone
and they say did you do did you do your steps?
Did you do your fourth step? You say yes, and
they say how many of you done? As many as
I was supposed to do. That's why I did one
fourth step. That's it. So the last thing that I
want to touch on here is that one of the
things that comes from doing a thorough fourth step, and

(43:10):
don I'm not really gonna touch on the fifth step,
but it comes from doing a thorough fourth step is
a feeling. It's a weird thing. You have a modicum
of dignity. I don't know how that happens, but you do.
You get a little bit of dignity that you didn't
have before, and you get a little bit of confidence
that you didn't have before because you did it. It's done.
And as much as I did, it's perfect. It's not

(43:32):
gonna get any more perfect ten years from now. It's
absolutely perfect for where I am, right here and right now.
And I got a little bit of confidence over that,
and then I got a little bit of dignity over that,
and then you know, we got back to the word
that we all hate. But I got a little trust
over that as well. I said, I think I can
talk to somebody about that. I wouldn't have been able
to talk to anybody about that when I began my
fourth step because it was overwhelming. But the more I

(43:54):
wrote down, the more I realized I can do this.
I can do this. And by the way, it's not
me at all, it's God's work. If you put a
piece of paper in my hand, you put a pen
in my hand, not writing down my fears. I'm not
writing down.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
The terrible things that I did.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
You know, I'm not doing any of those things that's
that's the third step. And every time I sat down
to write, and I didn't take a very long time
because I had a sponsored by whether that sat on me,
get one that sits and it's fat? Maybe who really
likes sit hard on you? So I didn't take a
long time doing it. You know. It was in and
out in less than a week. You know.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
I know people say, I've been working on my.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Fourth step for six months. Who wants to sit in
that kind of pain for six months? I have no idea,
but they do. That's our default, you know, sitting. I
guess we love the pain. I don't know. But when
we're done and we've emptied out and everything is on paper,
we don't have to wait very long.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
As a matter of fact, they tell you, don't wait
at all. Don't wait at all.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Get with the person that you're going to talk to
about this because you're emptied out and God is beginning
to move it. And until you feel that you have
no idea what grace is like that you don't feel
like the person you were when you got here. You
don't feel like the person you were when you started
this step. You don't feel like you feel like these

(45:10):
things are filling you and you're on your way, because
it's the first tangible act that we have done that says,
I am willing to do something that I don't yet
believe in because I'm going to do it anyway because
you told me to do it. And so when we
move out from the fourth step, we need something to
move in because God and nature both abhorror a vacuum.

(45:33):
So something will move in. And since we don't know
what that is moving in, that's why we move and
we seek outside help, outside help which comes in the
form of the fifth step. We're going to talk about
that next week. But in case you haven't figured out,
AA is riddled with seeking. We're constantly seeking something. So
when we're done with the fourth step, you've literally closed

(45:53):
the book on it. You pick up the phone and
you say, I'm ready to go. That's it, because something
is going to move in and you will be filled.
And yes, I guess you're on the way being rocketed
and rocketed to the fourth dimension.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
But it is the most extraordinary feeling, and you're.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
On your way. And by the way, it ever goes away,
and that's in the promises. It never goes away.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
So I think that's it.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
On the fourth step, it's a great day to be sober,
and we'll pick up step five next week. Oh no,