October 3, 2025 • 52 mins
"At M2 The Rock, we fully respect the anonymity of all 12-step fellowships. In alignment with their traditions, we do not represent or speak on behalf of any of these groups. Our mission is to share hope, not affiliation."
About M2 THE ROCK - MICHAEL MOLTHAN:
I’m Michael Molthan, host of The M2 The Rock Show—one of the fastest-growing podcasts and shows on self-improvement, mental health, addiction recovery, and spiritual transformation. I’m so grateful you’re here.I started M2 The Rock in 2017 to bring you conversations designed to make you happier, healthier, and more healed. Through raw and unfiltered discussions with experts, celebrities, thought leaders, and athletes, we uncover new perspectives on personal growth, recovery, and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.
My Story:
What sets my journey apart is that there wasn’t just one rock bottom—there were many. From being a successful luxury homebuilder to falling into addiction, homelessness, crime, and eventually 27 mugshots and prison, my life was in absolute chaos.Addiction was my temporary escape from childhood trauma, but it only led to destruction.
It wasn’t until I hit the lowest point imaginable that I finally found true freedom, redemption, and purpose. After an unexpected early release from prison in 2017, I walked 300 miles back to Dallas to turn myself in—only to be miraculously pardoned and told to “pay it forward.”And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing ever since.My MissionI believe that rock bottom is not the end—it’s a stepping stone to something greater.
My goal is to redefine what "rock bottom" means by helping others rebuild their Spirit, Mind, and Body. On M2 The Rock, I speak openly about trauma, addiction, recovery, and the power of transformation. I don’t shy away from topics like:
✅ Trauma & Addiction – Understanding the root causes
✅ Self-Sabotage & Mental Health – Breaking negative cycles
✅ Codependency & Enabling – How relationships impact recovery
✅ 12-Step Programs & Spiritual Healing – Finding true freedom
✅ Religious Trauma & Personal Growth – Healing from past wounds
"Everyone Is An Addict."
Whether it’s substances, work, validation, or negative thinking, we all have something we struggle with.
But recovery is possible, and transformation is real.
📺 Watch my story on I AM SECOND (9-Minute Film): Watch Here
📩 To book me for speaking engagements or collaborations: Email m2@m2therock.com
🔔 Join the Movement. Subscribe to M2 The Rock and start your journey of self-improvement, healing, and purpose.
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for more powerful faith-based content!
🌎 Website: https://m2therock.com/
▶️ YouTube: @MICHAELMOLTHANM2
📸 Instagram: @m2therockshow
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-m2-the-rock-show-michael-molthan--3443849/support.
About M2 THE ROCK - MICHAEL MOLTHAN:
I’m Michael Molthan, host of The M2 The Rock Show—one of the fastest-growing podcasts and shows on self-improvement, mental health, addiction recovery, and spiritual transformation. I’m so grateful you’re here.I started M2 The Rock in 2017 to bring you conversations designed to make you happier, healthier, and more healed. Through raw and unfiltered discussions with experts, celebrities, thought leaders, and athletes, we uncover new perspectives on personal growth, recovery, and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.
My Story:
What sets my journey apart is that there wasn’t just one rock bottom—there were many. From being a successful luxury homebuilder to falling into addiction, homelessness, crime, and eventually 27 mugshots and prison, my life was in absolute chaos.Addiction was my temporary escape from childhood trauma, but it only led to destruction.
It wasn’t until I hit the lowest point imaginable that I finally found true freedom, redemption, and purpose. After an unexpected early release from prison in 2017, I walked 300 miles back to Dallas to turn myself in—only to be miraculously pardoned and told to “pay it forward.”And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing ever since.My MissionI believe that rock bottom is not the end—it’s a stepping stone to something greater.
My goal is to redefine what "rock bottom" means by helping others rebuild their Spirit, Mind, and Body. On M2 The Rock, I speak openly about trauma, addiction, recovery, and the power of transformation. I don’t shy away from topics like:
✅ Trauma & Addiction – Understanding the root causes
✅ Self-Sabotage & Mental Health – Breaking negative cycles
✅ Codependency & Enabling – How relationships impact recovery
✅ 12-Step Programs & Spiritual Healing – Finding true freedom
✅ Religious Trauma & Personal Growth – Healing from past wounds
"Everyone Is An Addict."
Whether it’s substances, work, validation, or negative thinking, we all have something we struggle with.
But recovery is possible, and transformation is real.
📺 Watch my story on I AM SECOND (9-Minute Film): Watch Here
📩 To book me for speaking engagements or collaborations: Email m2@m2therock.com
🔔 Join the Movement. Subscribe to M2 The Rock and start your journey of self-improvement, healing, and purpose.
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for more powerful faith-based content!
🌎 Website: https://m2therock.com/
▶️ YouTube: @MICHAELMOLTHANM2
📸 Instagram: @m2therockshow
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-m2-the-rock-show-michael-molthan--3443849/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning, everybody. It's everybody going on the zip line.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
No, I can't wait for that, you know, recovery, spirituality.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I kind of like that topic. For the longest time, I.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Really thought not drinking was my solution to being an alcoholic.
I thought that certainly that was important, and if I
went about the practice of not drinking, I would start
to put the years together. Like some of the old timers,
it's some of the groups that I was going to
and my life would fall into place because I was
(00:44):
sober for a longer period of time. I really did
believe that things would get better in my life the
longer I stayed away from a drink.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It seemed like that's what people were talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It seemed like when people were picking up their coins,
they were talking about how much better it has gotten,
and it's because they don't drink anymore. You know. What
I later started to realize is just because I had
put down the drink didn't mean my my life was
falling into place.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Uh. There were a lot of things that were still
going wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I was I still had really bad relationship issues with
even if it was friends, but but with family. My
family still looked at me like like, you know, I
was a time bomb ready to go off for a
long time. My ex wife didn't really feel comfortable sending
my daughter for her the visits every couple of times
(01:43):
a year. It didn't seem like my employment was getting
any better.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I was.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I was a bad electrician and a bad electrical contracting firm, and.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Uh, you know that that wasn't real fulfilling to me.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
But you know, I want to go backwards in time
a little bit to the mid nineteen seventies. There was
a period of time I came out of the gate
just a grievously crazed alcoholic. I wasn't as alcoholic as
I later became, but I had the allergy of the
(02:23):
body from the get go, so whenever I drank, problems
would happen. And I got in a lot of trouble
in the early seventies. But by around nineteen seventy six
or so, I had had a DUI. I'd had some
realization that I needed to get my life together a
little bit. The high school parties were becoming fewer and
(02:44):
further between. There weren't as many people to do crazy
things with anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It seemed like people were getting on with their lives.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
They were going off to college, some of them were
taking full time jobs, some of them were getting married.
And I saw my peers growing up around me and
I wasn't doing that. I was still looking for the
high school party. So I had some realizations after a
(03:13):
dui dui really was not something that I wanted. Back
in nineteen I think it was nineteen seventy four I
got my first one, and when I got my license back,
I kind of made a deal with myself that I
was gonna calm down. And what I started to do
is I started to go on the marijuana maintenance program.
Does anyone know about that. I still had periods of
(03:37):
time where I got way drunk.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That was a regularity, but I was trying.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
To control the damaging effects of my drinking with you know,
just being stoned. And during that period of time, for
whatever reason, I started to.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Feel drawn toward spiritual acts.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And this is still in the middle of my my drinking.
I started to be drawn toward it. There was some
rock bands that showed signs of spiritual progress, Like I
really liked the rock band Yes, And if you started
to read their lyrics, you know they they certainly were
about about spiritual concepts and about spiritual growth. And I
(04:22):
started I was always a reader, so I started to
buy a lot of books, and a lot of these
books had to do with spirituality. They were bizarre spirituality,
but you know, like like the Carlos Costanada stuff, I
got involved in that, uh, the Suzuki stuff, the Zen stuff.
I just started buying these books on spirituality and looking,
(04:45):
you know, looking back in hindsight, I was being drawn toward.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Filling a hole that I had within me.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And you know, some of some of the recovery people
that I've paid a lot of attention to believe that,
you know, we have a god shaped holl and we
try to fill it with alcohol, and we try to
fill it with drugs, and we try to fill it
with sex, and we try to fill it with food,
and we try to fill it with money. Because there's
something very, very seriously incomplete within us.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
We know that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
There's something more important than something better out there. And
I wasn't the type of person to run off and
find a teacher in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I was going to do this myself. So I was
reading these books, and these books would give me a little.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Bit of comfort when you when you read spiritual books,
they can they can warn your soul a little bit,
but they're not necessarily transformative because without the practical application
of spirituality you read, it's an empty exercise. You can,
(05:59):
but you can become incredibly conversant in spiritual concepts you
have little experience with.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And uh, and and.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That's what That's what basically happened to me. I on
the on the outside, it looked like I was trying
to become a spiritual person.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And I remember, I remember the woman that I was
with at that time. It was I ended up.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Marrying her, and she was convinced because of my talk
and the books I was reading that things things were
gonna get better, because look what, Look at what Chris
is involved.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Look look at what he's reading.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
You know, he's he's he's reading the course in Miracles.
He's he's uh, he's studied, he's studying g I Grujef,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And and all these all these deep intellectual thinkers. Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
But the fact of the matter was I was alcoholic,
and I was an untreated alcoholic playing games with spirituality
because it was bringing me a little.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Bit of comfort. But I was I was so chronically.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Alcoholic that the alcoholism overcame any of that spiritual stuff
fairly quickly, so that that three year, three or four
year period of time when when I was on my
quest got eroded by active alcoholism. And and and I
(07:28):
you know, I.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Was no longer reading those books. I was reading science fiction,
you know, and and things.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That were, you know, taking me further away from myself.
Being in myself was becoming more and more uncomfortable. But
the fact of the matter is is that I recognized
even early on, even before I progressed, that there was
some type of a spiritual answer, I just didn't have
the wherewithal.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
To access it.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Fast forward about ten years, my life blows up.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I end up in alcoholics anonymous.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
And at first I was under the impression that I
needed to just remain sober and things would things would
get better.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But I truly believe, I truly.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Believe that the alcoholic is an extreme example of someone
who has a vacancy within themselves that needs to be
filled with something of the spirit.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It needs to be now.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I was also I was also kind of a kind
of a bizarrely untrained intellectual.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
You know, I read a lot of books.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I studied a lot of science, and I believed a
lot in the human potential too.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I believe that if you were going to grow, you
were going to do it by works, you were going
to do it under your own power, you were going
to do it by achievements. So there was a lot
of confusion in my life. You know, I get sober, and.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I'm going to a lot of Step meetings around our area.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
At that time, there were step meetings, speaker meetings, and
discussion meetings. The big book meetings were few and far
between and rather bizarre. So I was going to about
in my meeting mix. I was going to about four
Step meetings a week. And you know, looking back, I
probably went.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Through the twelve the Step book, the twelve and twelve.
I probably went through that.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Book a couple of hundred times in my first five years,
just going to all these meetings, because in the meetings
you would read the entire step and in those steps
is kind of a vision of spirituality, a vision of
appropriate behavior, kind of a blueprint for you know, moving
(10:04):
forward in this sober life. And I was I was
viewing all this stuff intellectually, but I wasn't capable of change,
you know. I you learn so much. You know, in hindsight,
you know what your problems are after they've been solved,
(10:25):
oftentimes in recovery. And now I understand what my problem was.
I was trying to learn my way recovery, and I
did it through additional books. In the Big Book, it says,
you know, there are great books out there, as some
priest ministers or rabbis.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I didn't do that part, you know, I went.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Off on my own and and I started up again
my my quest for spiritual momentum by going to the bookstore,
by by by you know, finding catalogs by you know,
a lot of times in those early days, people were
passing around books. Emmett Fox was passed around a lot.
(11:10):
The road less Traveled was passed around a lot. And
and reading those books again gives one a sense of
temporary comfort. Yet the needed change usually doesn't come on
its own.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Uh. I needed looking back.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I needed to remove the obstacles in my path that
were separating me from the practical application of spirituality. In
other words, I had to go back to spirituality one
oh one.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I was reading all the.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Advanced textbooks, you know, because we're like that we you know,
don't give us the don't give us the rudimentary stuff,
but we're way past that, you know, give us the
graduate level stuff. So I reintroduced myself to a whole
crap load of spiritual books. There was a period of
(12:13):
time in two thousand and two where I had to
move out of a very large house. And in this house,
I had a whole bedroom that was a library. And
not only not only was every wall filled Florida ceiling
with bookshelves filled with books, but I had about ninety
boxes of books in the basement that wouldn't even fit
on the shelves. You know, listen, obsessive compulsive behavior isn't
(12:37):
just with drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was like, wow, if a spiritual book is good,
four thousand must be better. So I mean, I had
this incredible library of stuff and I even read.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Some of them, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So so I was I was back at this. But
what I needed, what I needed, and I needed it
very very desperately, was exposure to a teacher. I needed
a teacher because what teachers will do is that they
can recognize the.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Prerequisites that you've missed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They can be your academic spiritual advisors, and they can
point you back to lessons that you've learned that are
sabotaging your spiritual growth or your intellectual growth at present.
And I ended up with I ended up with a
couple of couple of teachers. One of them was a
(13:32):
man named Happy Grateful Ray. He unfortunately became so heavenly
he became noworthly good, and he got drunk, and I
went on the twelve step call on that one about
five years later.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But he did expose me to some stuff. But where
I really learned, where I really.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Learned the basics, and without the basics, you're not gonna
get very far.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Was from the Big book teachers, from the recovery teachers.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
My first real teacher, the person who cleared away enough
of the stuff in front of me so that I
could really start to grow spiritually was Joe Hawk, originally
with the Salvation Army Talks, and later you know, I
had the wonderful opportunity of working with him personally.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
He understood that.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
The intellect is not necessarily the way to spiritual growth.
It's more it's more in the application of spiritual principles
than it is in your deep understanding, and I had
to go back to square one, and I had to
(14:55):
go back to the steps. I had to go back
into the steps like I'd never gone into them before.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And you know, I remember, I remember.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
One of the first serious exercises he gave me was
a first step exercises.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And I really thought I.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Was beyond this. You know, now, come on, I know
I'm an alcoholic. Let's get to the good stuff. But
he kept me in Step one exercises for about six months,
which was kind of bizarre.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I mean, he had me, he had me doing these.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
These exercises and then I had to meditate. Then I
had to go back and redo them, and then I
had to do more meditation. And there was a lot
of There was a lot of zen in Joe. And
what I mean by that is a really good zen
master will never let you ever think that you've got it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
As soon as you think you've.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Got it, what you're doing is you're closing the door
on really getting it. So I would, I remember, I
would call him up and I'd say, Joe, man, that exercise.
You know, I thought you were such a horse's ass
giving me that exercise. But man, now that I've done it.
Let me tell you, Oh, man, it was unbelievable. I now, now,
(16:14):
I understand. Now, I understand. And he'd say, no, you don't,
You've got it completely wrong. And I'd be like, oh,
some of the some of the lessons that I learned
from this was again, it was about these exercises, It
(16:34):
was about this journey. It was about continuance, persistence and
continuance with these these practices. Make no mistake. If you're alcoholic,
alcohol is not your problem. Alcoholism is your problem. And
if you're if you have alcoholism, applied spirituality is your solution.
(17:02):
There is no other solution than I've ever seen. And
I've been around a lot of professional treatment people, and
I've bet I'm not saying AA applied to AA principles,
is it the only way. I'm saying, applied spirituality is
the only way. And applied spirituality is much different than
(17:23):
intellectual spirituality. I had to do these things. I had
to do the fourth step and the fifth step. I
had to do the amends.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I had to go out and make the amends.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I had to go back and that probably you know,
different people have different parts of the step process that challenged.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Them more than others. I think the.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Amends part challenged me more than anything, and it was
because of.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The sense of self that I was hanging on to.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like Marsha talked about before, I was so attached to
what I thought you thought about me. Nothing would humiliate
me more than to think that I looked small in
your eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Uh I would. I would tell my.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Story at a meeting of thirty people and twenty nine
had shake my hand and say, great story, Chris, that
was one of the best stories I've ever heard, and
one person to go you sounded a little bit pompous,
and I would go.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Home like, oh, God of Babas.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
You know, that's that's an unhealthy attachment to an ego
and a sense of self. Now for me to be
able to get past that, I had to do a
whole lot of spiritual work I did.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I had to do.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You know, there's there's a saying in AA we don't
care what your opinion is, We care what your feet
are doing.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
And that's really really true.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I believe with those that are alcoholic, your opinion, although
it may be interesting at four days sober, is not
as important as where your shoes are taking you.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You know, are you going to a meeting. Are are you?
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Are you actually actually participating in this recovery process?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Now? Now the spiritual teacher, and I've had many, but
the spiritual.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Teacher that was the most impactful on my life again
was Joe. Joe was a man of extreme in many
many ways, and when it came time for him to
put into application spirituality, he.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Went further than anyone I've ever known. In AA.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He spent a year studying with an Indian shaman, Don
Coyas in Denver, you know, doing this sweat lodges and
you know all that stuff. Spent five years with him
under his tutelage, spent another five years with his zen
master in California, spend another five years with with Thomas Merton,
(20:15):
not Thomas Mertin, Thomas Keating, one of Thomas Merton's.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Proteges, and then five.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Years under the principal tutor of the Dali Lama in Dmsala, India.
This guy took it to extremes, you know. And and
what he had in the very very beginning was a
marvelous structure of spiritual mechanics that he never let go of.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
He never got too far in the door.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know that great uh, that great poem I stand
by the door.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Joe never went too far in to.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Be able to reach back out and help those who
were who were not as far along on the path.
And a lot of application of these spiritual teachings he
was able to able to apply them to recovery because listen,
twelve step recovery philosophy is spirituality one oh one. The
(21:12):
lessons that you learn in twelve step recovery philosophy are
applicable in every spiritual discipline. In Christianity, in Judaism, if
you're studying Hinduism or Tibetan Buddhism or zen Buddhism, you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Say, geez, that's step six or something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I mean, I mean the wonderful miracle I see of
Bill Wilson at three and a half years sober, having
his head far enough out of his ass to put
together these basic spiritual principles in the twelve steps still
(21:56):
still is remarkable to me. I don't know how you
would be if I would have written a book at
three and a half years sober.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
It would have been a pile of crap, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So he was at the right place, at the right
time with the right people, and he took his job very,
very seriously, and there was a lot of input, you know,
the first one hundred or so, you know, there was
a lot of input and a lot of suggestions and
it was kind of an open, open system until you
know the final revisions. And I see that as our prerequisite.
(22:36):
What a prerequisite is.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Is before you move on, you need to take this class.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And I think as alcoholics there is room to broaden
and deepen our spiritual growth in a hundred forms of
practice and devotion.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
There really is.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
But if we skip the prerequisites of surrender, of identifying
that of our own unaided will, you know, our lives
are not going to be successful, you know on our
self will if we skip that, if we skip the
honesty that comes from doing a fourth and a fifth step,
(23:16):
and and that that that confessional aspect of of four
and five about what are what are you know, just
just how much sand our feet really are? You know,
how much how much clay we're really standing on? If
we skip six and seven, where we recognize that our
(23:37):
character defects are much larger than us and we need
a power greater than us to move past these character defects.
If we skip making things right for the harms that
we've caused, if we skip learning prayer and meditation as
a discipline a discipline, if we skip the the the
(24:01):
attitude of compassion and service that the twelve step really
points us toward. If we skip those lessons as an alcoholic,
our spiritual life is going to be empty. It's gonna
have periods of time where on the outside we can
look very very spiritual, indeed, but on the inside where
(24:25):
we're gonna be hollow, and we're gonna be, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
An empty gong.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
As as as the apostle Paul says, you know, the
clanging of a symbol, you know it really means nothing. So,
you know, spiritual growth has become probably the most the
most important part of my life. Got some other lessons
(24:53):
that I learned. I learned this lesson especially from Mark Houston,
is he would approach a spiritual book as a textbook.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I can't say that I'm there yet.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I like to read these books and I like to
apply certain pieces of them, but he would What he
would do is he would work with one book and
try to gather as much of the application of that
book as possible and put it into practice.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And I know some of the books that he used.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And you could see, I think in no other person
I ever met or knew.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
You could see the power in Mark Houston.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
This whole thing, this whole recovery process, I believe, is
about freedom, and I believe it's about power. It's about
exposing ourselves to the actual power of God and allowing
allowing ourselves to be accessible to the power of God
(25:59):
moving in and through us and doing for us what
we cannot do for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And you can see this power.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
You can see this power in certain people who have
done the application of.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
These principles in their lives.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They're not necessarily the smartest people, they're not necessarily the
coolest people, but they're the people who have done the
most application of these principles. And you can cut the
power coming out of them with a knife. And I
think we've all met and been exposed to people like that.
(26:37):
They can do things that are absolutely remarkable, and they
usually take no personal credit for it because they know
where the power comes from.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They know it is not their power.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Every once in a while, I'm reading this great book
now called After the Ecstasy, The laundry. And what this
book talks about is it talks about as an innate
need in the human condition, we desire enlightenment. It's an
(27:13):
instinctual drive that I believe God instilled in us so
that we instinctively try to.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Head in the right direction. Now, there's a lot of
things that screw this up.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Money, power, sex, there's a lot of things that screw
up this drive in us. But I believe it's been
implanted in us to grow spiritually. That's why we feel
that vacancy sometimes with that God shaped hole. There are
a lot of things that mess us up, and there
are a lot of people who start the spiritual path
(27:48):
and go wrong. In this book, it talks about some
of the spiritual masters who've really screwed up big time.
It usually involves sex and power and money, and they
abuse the God given power. The power does not come
from the human condition. It comes from God. And then
(28:09):
once they get this power, they become drunk with it
and they can You know, once you have this spiritual power,
it's a lot easier to seduce, it's a lot easier
to gather money, and it's a lot easier to gain a.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Crew of people that will do for you.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
And there's a lot of abuse, and there's a lot
of stories about people who have gone wrong and the
disasters that follow. And I believe those are great lessons
because they remind one once again that this is not
our power. On a daily basis, we need to do
(28:55):
the things that we need to do to keep the
ego in check. There's an age old battle you can
go back in in the you can go back thousands
of thousands of years. The first the earliest literature that
we find, you know, Homer's Honesty.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean stuff that was written thousands and thousands of
years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
A lot of times it's it's stories about a hero
and how he had to overcome these temptations and how
he had to to try to do the next right thing,
even though it was not easy. And it talks about
this this duality, this conflict that we have in our
(29:42):
minds between the spirit and the ego, or the good
and the evil, or the devil and the God. I mean,
you will read about this over the course of written literature.
It's not something that's new. What we need to know
as alcoholics is we can't lose this battle, because if
(30:07):
we lose it The thing that keeps us safe and
protected from alcoholic death is a solid spiritual condition. And
the normal man out there walking up and down the road,
who maybe goes to church on Sunday, or maybe he's
practicing in an ashram, or you know, maybe maybe he
(30:28):
has his own own you know, different types of spiritual worship,
they can survive screwing it up. As alcoholics, we pay
the ultimate price for failure to adhere to these spiritual principles.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
The spiritual principles.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That Bill makes very very clear in Spirituality one oh one,
which is the book Alcoholics Anonymous. So that's an additional
warning to us as alcoholics. When the ego is left
unchecked in an alcoholic, the ego goes to the bar,
the ego goes to the copman, and there's usually not
(31:13):
a great outcome. Alcoholism and drug addiction. If you look
at it purely scientific from outside of the recovery fellowships,
it's a very very bleak landscape. Statistically, many, many more than.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Most of us die of this.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
There's a half life to crack addicts that's extraordinarily short.
There's a longer half life to alcoholics, but it's not
very long. Insurance companies understand that if we've had professional
treatment for these things, we're not a great risk for
life insurance. Looking at it objectively from outside, you can
(31:59):
see that more than.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Most of us die.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And what I see is is the minority that escape
this fate are ones that embrace a spiritual path.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
They find the right way. And again, you don't have
to be smart to find the right way.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You just have to be persistent, and having a good
guide helps.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
In alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
In the twelve step world, I make it a suggestion
to people whenever I'm doing treatment commitments to be very
very discerning when you find a sponsor and do a
little bit of qualification, even though it may feel real
uncomfortable to be interviewing a perspective sponsor.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
There are many many people out there who have.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Not grown past tersary spirituality in alcoholics Anonymous, there are
a lot of people that you could ask to be
your sponsor who do not have real experience with the
twelve steps.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I know I did it myself.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
My first sponsor, who God loved him, kept me sober
enough to find recovery and find a correct path towards spirituality.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Early on, he shouldn't have even been in AA.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Okay, he was a speed freak who got arrested, went
to AA to keep from going to jail, and found
a social clique.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
It worked for him. You know, he liked crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
People, so he became a meeting maker and he even
had a very serious service ethic liked he liked to
do things for people because.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
It made him feel good. But he wasn't an alcoholic.
I was a critically chronically, you know, really in trouble.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Alcoholic, and I went to him and he gave me
at least what he could. He wasn't trying to hurt me,
and he didn't even know he wasn't giving me the
right stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know, how do you know what? You don't know?
But what he did do was he gave me enough.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
For sobriety to at least last long enough for me
to find teachers who could teach me about spirituality and
about alcoholism. So finding the right guide, finding the right
teacher is important. You know, every single person that spoke
here today, they've got serious ass.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Sponsors and teachers.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And it's not necessarily the people in their home group,
although sometimes it is. Sometimes it's people many many states
away because they take this, they take placing themselves under
the care and direction of a spiritual guide very very seriously,
and they want the best possible guidance.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That they can get. And that is very very important
to me. Also, because this is not a game.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
If somewhere along the line, I become drunk with the
power that's not mine anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I need to be accountable to somebody.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Somebody needs to have the spiritual consent to kick me,
and he has and say, Chris, your ego is running wild.
You you know, you need to you need to slow down,
You need to you know, we need to talk.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I need somebody that will do that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And it's that's a life and death job for somebody,
you know. To continue to grow spiritually, you have to
find people who are ahead of you on the path.
A lot of times that's the right way to go.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You need to find people.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Who are a little bit further down the road and
and who can who can continue to keep giving you
the guy that's going to continue to help you to
grow in understanding and effectiveness, to continue to participate in
the maintenance of your spiritual condition. And that's a very
(36:11):
that's a very very important part of our lives.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
If spirituality, if all it was was a treatment for
my alcoholism, I would do it anyway. But the great
news about spirituality is it offers you literally hundreds of remarkable,
incredible promises in your life. Your life starts to grow
(36:37):
so large that it's almost unbelievable when I think what
has been accomplished with me in the last five years.
Me the guy who could who could screw up a
guitar lesson.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I mean, now, listen, this is this is me.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Prior to applying some of the spiritual principles, I wanted
to be a boy Scout, join the Boy Scouts, went
on one camping trip, wanted to learn the guitar, went and
took one.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Guitar lesson and stole the guitar.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Decided to join the wrestling team, did one practice, quit,
decided to go to college, spent spend three and a
half years getting six credits.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You know, I mean, this is this is me.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So I am telling you the things that have happened
in my life come as a direct result of the
power that flows in and through me. It's it's not
my power, it's not it's not necessarily reflective of the
work that I'm doing. The work that I'm doing empties
(37:46):
the vessel so that it can be filled with the power.
And you know, I again I said this, it's dangerous
to think that it's your power. But some of the
things that have been accomplished in my life in the
last list five years are bizarrely, you know, incredible. I
got a chance to do an XM and serious, serious
(38:09):
satellite radio show.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Just by accident.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I mean, I got interviewed on this on this radio show,
and the woman that owned that particular station said, Hey,
would you like to be the host from now on?
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I really liked what you said, so I said sure.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I mean, you know, I didn't know anything about being
a host of a radio show, especially a satellite show
that went everywhere and had seventy affiliates from Calcutta through
London to San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And because because I was awake to.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Opportunity, and because there was a lack of self centered
fear in my life, because of that sense of guidance,
that intuitive sense of guidance that I that I was
awake to, I just said yes. I didn't say I
didn't say to myself, I'm.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Gonna suck at this and I can't. You know, I'm afraid.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I just said yes because it was an awesome opportunity.
It was a show where you interviewed different people from
twelve Step fellowships. And you know, I was just a host.
I wasn't a member of any fellowship or anything. I
anonymously interviewed people from different twelve Step fellowships. I will
say this the strangest and scariest twelve step fellowship. The
(39:29):
people that I interviewed was Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Okay,
my buddy Dave and I are saying, hey, there's two
chicks coming from Sex and Love Addicts Anatomus.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
That should be interesting.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
By the end of the show, we were changing our
name and telling them we lived in a different state.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
We were scared. A relapse for them was multiple restraining orders,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
They were stalking some bitches and and you know, but anyway,
I had a great time doing you know, I went
I went from I went from that to uh, I
actually hosted a TV show, a music TV show for
a short period of time as a cable show.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I went from that to being asked by.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
A big recovery organization, a multi million dollar Recovery Foundation
to to put together a web platform and a web
broadcasting and interview addiction treatment professionals for the sole purpose
of highlighting the best practices out there in addiction treatment.
And and for two and a half years I did that,
(40:34):
and I flew all over the planet interviewing some really
really interesting people.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
You know, where is it? Where's that I'm a bad electrician?
Where where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
You know, uh, somewhere along the way because I started
to become halfway.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Dependable in my life.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I went from being a bad electrician to getting into
facility service. And about a year and a half ago,
I was offered the job to take over an account
for a pharmaceutical.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Company running their facility department.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Now, being a facility director is it's a high level
job at these places because you're in charge of all
the processes that keep them being able to manufacture these
life saving drugs. I mean, I mean, if I screw
up the assembly line, stop, you know, it's a big
it's a big responsibility. And in the last year I've
(41:32):
been able to increase the scope.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Of that job four times.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I went from a two million dollar baseline to a
ten million dollar baseline.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
In a year, I became out of nineteen accounts, I became.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
The number one facility manager in the country for I
was number one in customer satisfaction and number two in
financial performance. And I'm an idiot, you know what I mean, Like,
I can't go I can't go to motor vehicle to
(42:03):
get my license back without being drunk.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
You know I did that one time.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I'm getting my license back for a third DWY and
I went there just as drunk as could be.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
That was a really bad move. You know, I was never.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Dependable at anything. You have to be dependable to be
able to do jobs like this. I get invited to
places like this. I have a group of friends who
have all come to me. Almost all of them have
(42:40):
come to me through the application of recovery principles in
one way or another, whether they're my sponsores or whether
they're just fellowship brothers, fellowship sisters.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And my biggest.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Problem today is the amount of time time I have
in the day, because I have so much opportunity and
so many people that you know, I want to connect
with at deeper levels that that I.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Don't have time to do. You know, that's my biggest
problem today that I don't have enough.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Time to do the great things that are in front
of me. You know, these friendships are these these are
people that would take a bullet for me. I've always
wanted friendships like that. But green Man and Weezer just
hung around until the coke was gone. You know, I
always wanted those types of friendships. I think we're a
(43:36):
tribal people instinctially, and we.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Need to be tribal. We need to have our.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Crew, and and today today I have that, and I
can I can.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Call on people, not that I need people that often.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Because if you successfully or even somewhat successive sccessfully uh
apply spiritual principles in your life, you know, you tend
to not get in too many jackpots, so things tend
to run pretty smooth in your life. But I've got
a crew of people that I can really really count on.
(44:17):
Some of the great promises in the book that I
see overlooked all the time. Certainly the ten step promises
are great promises. There are promises that we're that those
are the freedom promises.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
We're free. We do not need to be meeting dependent.
If we've recovered, we.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Will be going back to meetings because that's the place
where there.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Are people to help.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
We're not going to be going back to meetings to
fill up like it's a spiritual gas pump, you know,
Like I had a real hard day at work today,
I'm going to double up on my meetings tonight.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
If you're doing that, you are going in the opposite
direction that you should be going in.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
You'll be going to meetings for the right reasons instead
of the selfish reasons.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
It will become an innate ethic to carry the message
to other people.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
It will become instinctual, and that you would you will
have an inner need to carry the message to other people.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
And that will come as a byproduct of recovery.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
You shouldn't need to.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Be encouraged to go to beginner's meetings or sponsor people.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
That will become automatic. And that is a great Uh,
that is a great benefit. You look at any of the.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Truly truly happy people, and they have some type of
a compassionate, charitable nature. They're doing something for somebody a
great A great example is this is one of my
sponsees who you know, who certainly surpassed the teacher.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
You know, some students asked the teacher. This guy was
one of them.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
He was actually running the Bazuka Bubblegum company, the Tops company,
and you remember Pokemon.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Cards, that was him, Push Pops that was him.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Baseball Cards, Tops Cards, Bazuka Bubble bubble gum, now that
was him.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
He was running that company.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And when he started working with me, for whatever reason,
he just became absolutely one hundred percent willing to do
everything that was asked of him. That's rare, unfortunately, but
this guy just said, tell me what to do, and
he took it like it was a college, you know, assignment,
and he wanted to get an a and he just
(46:38):
went out and did it. And he went from making
half a million dollars a year to helping his company
downsize and downsize him out. And right now he's running
a soup kitchen because he volunteered at it for five years.
They loved him so much. They said, would you run
our soup kitchen for twenty thousand a year whatever? And
(47:00):
he said, I would be honored. That on the outside
looks like looks like a downward trajectory in your employment.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Line, it is anything.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But in this guy's life, he went from being very
successful and inwardly empty to being more fold than probably
anyone I know with his spiritual practices.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
He's a go to guy if there are newcomers.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
There's nobody better than this guy because he has the
compassion to sit with these knuckleheads hour after hour after
hour and just listened and just keep handing them exercises
and encouraging to do step work. And now he has
a gigantic crew in North Jersey who are running around
(47:55):
sponsoring people. You know, to see this fellowship that we
crave grew up about us is amazing. It's amazing. And
the way to create a fellowship is to carry the
message to alcoholics in the way the book Alcoholics Anonymous
asks us to.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Now you have a crew, you know, Peter, you know
what having a crew is like.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
You can call these guys any time and say hey,
I need you in Florida and they would be there.
You know, having this fellowship that you crave grew up
about you is absolutely amazing. The best years of our
lives are ahead of us.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
In the eighties, when I was.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Drinking, I was reflecting on how fun it was at
the high school parties. You know, you'd get drunk out
of your mind, and that, you know, there the music
it'd be on, and and there'd be a fight and
a car crash, and you'd be inappropriate with the women,
and they'd be okay with it, you know, and everything
was just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
At least that's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
And as the years went by, I reflected I lived
in the past. I reflected back on these great years
that I had and wondered where it had all gone
and where.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
It had gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
One great promise is the best years of our life
are ahead of us. Some of the things that happened
through the application of spiritual principles is Peter talked about this,
also being trapped in the past and having anxiety of
the future.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
They talked about living in the now, living in the now,
be here now, living in the now.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
I didn't know what they were talking about in early sobriety,
because I hadn't done any of the things that you
need to do to be able to clean yourself up
enough so that you can be present to this holy instant.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
There is only the now.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
The past is but a memory, in the future is uncertain.
Only this holy instant, and to be able to embrace
it and be comfortable with it is one of the
true gifts of a spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
You know, so many people die from anxiety.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
The things that are brought on by anxiety disorders, the
hypertension and you know, the uh, the cardiovascular problems and
cancer and all this other stuff is really brought on by.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
An inability to live in the now.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
So much of our time is wasted regretting the past,
thinking about what we should have done and the mistakes
we made, and if only we could go back in
time and do it differently. That's a completely waste, a
complete waste of the holy now. And to be able
to embrace that, to be able to sit in the silence.
(51:01):
We cannot sit in the silence when we're dragging knapsacks
full of crap from our past, or we're worried about
what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
In the future. We can't sit in that silence.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
And I found personally that the true healing of my
spirit comes in that deep silence and that deep connection
to my maker, to the God of my understanding. That's
where the true healing is. This has been one of
(51:34):
my favorite workshops that I've ever gone on. You know,
every single person here, thank you so much for coming.
This was a sojourn, you know, this was this was
more than just going down.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
The street to the meeting.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
But I think we've experienced I think we've all experienced
something here this weekend that we're going to be able
to take with us. And if you've learned anything here,
if anything is really stuck with you, if anything has
disturbed you, sit with that and turn it into something
(52:07):
that can be applicable to your spiritual growth. Take some
of these lessons that you've learned, if you've learned anything,
and apply them as the drowning would seize a life preserver.
And if that's the case, this has been with anyone,
this has been an incredibly worthwhile venture for me.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Thank you for being ready
Good morning, everybody. It's everybody going on the zip line.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
No, I can't wait for that, you know, recovery, spirituality.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I kind of like that topic. For the longest time, I.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Really thought not drinking was my solution to being an alcoholic.
I thought that certainly that was important, and if I
went about the practice of not drinking, I would start
to put the years together. Like some of the old timers,
it's some of the groups that I was going to
and my life would fall into place because I was
(00:44):
sober for a longer period of time. I really did
believe that things would get better in my life the
longer I stayed away from a drink.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It seemed like that's what people were talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It seemed like when people were picking up their coins,
they were talking about how much better it has gotten,
and it's because they don't drink anymore. You know. What
I later started to realize is just because I had
put down the drink didn't mean my my life was
falling into place.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Uh. There were a lot of things that were still
going wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I was I still had really bad relationship issues with
even if it was friends, but but with family. My
family still looked at me like like, you know, I
was a time bomb ready to go off for a
long time. My ex wife didn't really feel comfortable sending
my daughter for her the visits every couple of times
(01:43):
a year. It didn't seem like my employment was getting
any better.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I was.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I was a bad electrician and a bad electrical contracting firm, and.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Uh, you know that that wasn't real fulfilling to me.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
But you know, I want to go backwards in time
a little bit to the mid nineteen seventies. There was
a period of time I came out of the gate
just a grievously crazed alcoholic. I wasn't as alcoholic as
I later became, but I had the allergy of the
(02:23):
body from the get go, so whenever I drank, problems
would happen. And I got in a lot of trouble
in the early seventies. But by around nineteen seventy six
or so, I had had a DUI. I'd had some
realization that I needed to get my life together a
little bit. The high school parties were becoming fewer and
(02:44):
further between. There weren't as many people to do crazy
things with anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
It seemed like people were getting on with their lives.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
They were going off to college, some of them were
taking full time jobs, some of them were getting married.
And I saw my peers growing up around me and
I wasn't doing that. I was still looking for the
high school party. So I had some realizations after a
(03:13):
dui dui really was not something that I wanted. Back
in nineteen I think it was nineteen seventy four I
got my first one, and when I got my license back,
I kind of made a deal with myself that I
was gonna calm down. And what I started to do
is I started to go on the marijuana maintenance program.
Does anyone know about that. I still had periods of
(03:37):
time where I got way drunk.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That was a regularity, but I was trying.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
To control the damaging effects of my drinking with you know,
just being stoned. And during that period of time, for
whatever reason, I started to.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Feel drawn toward spiritual acts.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
And this is still in the middle of my my drinking.
I started to be drawn toward it. There was some
rock bands that showed signs of spiritual progress, Like I
really liked the rock band Yes, And if you started
to read their lyrics, you know they they certainly were
about about spiritual concepts and about spiritual growth. And I
(04:22):
started I was always a reader, so I started to
buy a lot of books, and a lot of these
books had to do with spirituality. They were bizarre spirituality,
but you know, like like the Carlos Costanada stuff, I
got involved in that, uh, the Suzuki stuff, the Zen stuff.
I just started buying these books on spirituality and looking,
(04:45):
you know, looking back in hindsight, I was being drawn toward.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Filling a hole that I had within me.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
And you know, some of some of the recovery people
that I've paid a lot of attention to believe that,
you know, we have a god shaped holl and we
try to fill it with alcohol, and we try to
fill it with drugs, and we try to fill it
with sex, and we try to fill it with food,
and we try to fill it with money. Because there's
something very, very seriously incomplete within us.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
We know that.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
There's something more important than something better out there. And
I wasn't the type of person to run off and
find a teacher in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I was going to do this myself. So I was
reading these books, and these books would give me a little.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Bit of comfort when you when you read spiritual books,
they can they can warn your soul a little bit,
but they're not necessarily transformative because without the practical application
of spirituality you read, it's an empty exercise. You can,
(05:59):
but you can become incredibly conversant in spiritual concepts you
have little experience with.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And uh, and and.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
That's what That's what basically happened to me. I on
the on the outside, it looked like I was trying
to become a spiritual person.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And I remember, I remember the woman that I was
with at that time. It was I ended up.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Marrying her, and she was convinced because of my talk
and the books I was reading that things things were
gonna get better, because look what, Look at what Chris
is involved.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Look look at what he's reading.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
You know, he's he's he's reading the course in Miracles.
He's he's uh, he's studied, he's studying g I Grujef,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And and all these all these deep intellectual thinkers. Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
But the fact of the matter was I was alcoholic,
and I was an untreated alcoholic playing games with spirituality
because it was bringing me a little.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Bit of comfort. But I was I was so chronically.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Alcoholic that the alcoholism overcame any of that spiritual stuff
fairly quickly, so that that three year, three or four
year period of time when when I was on my
quest got eroded by active alcoholism. And and and I
(07:28):
you know, I.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Was no longer reading those books. I was reading science fiction,
you know, and and things.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That were, you know, taking me further away from myself.
Being in myself was becoming more and more uncomfortable. But
the fact of the matter is is that I recognized
even early on, even before I progressed, that there was
some type of a spiritual answer, I just didn't have
the wherewithal.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
To access it.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Fast forward about ten years, my life blows up.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I end up in alcoholics anonymous.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
And at first I was under the impression that I
needed to just remain sober and things would things would
get better.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
But I truly believe, I truly.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Believe that the alcoholic is an extreme example of someone
who has a vacancy within themselves that needs to be
filled with something of the spirit.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It needs to be now.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I was also I was also kind of a kind
of a bizarrely untrained intellectual.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
You know, I read a lot of books.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I studied a lot of science, and I believed a
lot in the human potential too.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
At that time.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I believe that if you were going to grow, you
were going to do it by works, you were going
to do it under your own power, you were going
to do it by achievements. So there was a lot
of confusion in my life. You know, I get sober, and.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I'm going to a lot of Step meetings around our area.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
At that time, there were step meetings, speaker meetings, and
discussion meetings. The big book meetings were few and far
between and rather bizarre. So I was going to about
in my meeting mix. I was going to about four
Step meetings a week. And you know, looking back, I
probably went.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Through the twelve the Step book, the twelve and twelve.
I probably went through that.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Book a couple of hundred times in my first five years,
just going to all these meetings, because in the meetings
you would read the entire step and in those steps
is kind of a vision of spirituality, a vision of
appropriate behavior, kind of a blueprint for you know, moving
(10:04):
forward in this sober life. And I was I was
viewing all this stuff intellectually, but I wasn't capable of change,
you know. I you learn so much. You know, in hindsight,
you know what your problems are after they've been solved,
(10:25):
oftentimes in recovery. And now I understand what my problem was.
I was trying to learn my way recovery, and I
did it through additional books. In the Big Book, it says,
you know, there are great books out there, as some
priest ministers or rabbis.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I didn't do that part, you know, I went.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Off on my own and and I started up again
my my quest for spiritual momentum by going to the bookstore,
by by by you know, finding catalogs by you know,
a lot of times in those early days, people were
passing around books. Emmett Fox was passed around a lot.
(11:10):
The road less Traveled was passed around a lot. And
and reading those books again gives one a sense of
temporary comfort. Yet the needed change usually doesn't come on
its own.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Uh. I needed looking back.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I needed to remove the obstacles in my path that
were separating me from the practical application of spirituality. In
other words, I had to go back to spirituality one
oh one.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
I was reading all the.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Advanced textbooks, you know, because we're like that we you know,
don't give us the don't give us the rudimentary stuff,
but we're way past that, you know, give us the
graduate level stuff. So I reintroduced myself to a whole
crap load of spiritual books. There was a period of
(12:13):
time in two thousand and two where I had to
move out of a very large house. And in this house,
I had a whole bedroom that was a library. And
not only not only was every wall filled Florida ceiling
with bookshelves filled with books, but I had about ninety
boxes of books in the basement that wouldn't even fit
on the shelves. You know, listen, obsessive compulsive behavior isn't
(12:37):
just with drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It was like, wow, if a spiritual book is good,
four thousand must be better. So I mean, I had
this incredible library of stuff and I even read.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Some of them, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So so I was I was back at this. But
what I needed, what I needed, and I needed it
very very desperately, was exposure to a teacher. I needed
a teacher because what teachers will do is that they
can recognize the.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Prerequisites that you've missed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
They can be your academic spiritual advisors, and they can
point you back to lessons that you've learned that are
sabotaging your spiritual growth or your intellectual growth at present.
And I ended up with I ended up with a
couple of couple of teachers. One of them was a
(13:32):
man named Happy Grateful Ray. He unfortunately became so heavenly
he became noworthly good, and he got drunk, and I
went on the twelve step call on that one about
five years later.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But he did expose me to some stuff. But where
I really learned, where I really.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Learned the basics, and without the basics, you're not gonna
get very far.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Was from the Big book teachers, from the recovery teachers.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
My first real teacher, the person who cleared away enough
of the stuff in front of me so that I
could really start to grow spiritually was Joe Hawk, originally
with the Salvation Army Talks, and later you know, I
had the wonderful opportunity of working with him personally.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
He understood that.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
The intellect is not necessarily the way to spiritual growth.
It's more it's more in the application of spiritual principles
than it is in your deep understanding, and I had
to go back to square one, and I had to
(14:55):
go back to the steps. I had to go back
into the steps like I'd never gone into them before.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And you know, I remember, I remember.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
One of the first serious exercises he gave me was
a first step exercises.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And I really thought I.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Was beyond this. You know, now, come on, I know
I'm an alcoholic. Let's get to the good stuff. But
he kept me in Step one exercises for about six months,
which was kind of bizarre.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I mean, he had me, he had me doing these.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
These exercises and then I had to meditate. Then I
had to go back and redo them, and then I
had to do more meditation. And there was a lot
of There was a lot of zen in Joe. And
what I mean by that is a really good zen
master will never let you ever think that you've got it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
As soon as you think you've.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Got it, what you're doing is you're closing the door
on really getting it. So I would, I remember, I
would call him up and I'd say, Joe, man, that exercise.
You know, I thought you were such a horse's ass
giving me that exercise. But man, now that I've done it.
Let me tell you, Oh, man, it was unbelievable. I now, now,
(16:14):
I understand. Now, I understand. And he'd say, no, you don't,
You've got it completely wrong. And I'd be like, oh,
some of the some of the lessons that I learned
from this was again, it was about these exercises, It
(16:34):
was about this journey. It was about continuance, persistence and
continuance with these these practices. Make no mistake. If you're alcoholic,
alcohol is not your problem. Alcoholism is your problem. And
if you're if you have alcoholism, applied spirituality is your solution.
(17:02):
There is no other solution than I've ever seen. And
I've been around a lot of professional treatment people, and
I've bet I'm not saying AA applied to AA principles,
is it the only way. I'm saying, applied spirituality is
the only way. And applied spirituality is much different than
(17:23):
intellectual spirituality. I had to do these things. I had
to do the fourth step and the fifth step. I
had to do the amends.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I had to go out and make the amends.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I had to go back and that probably you know,
different people have different parts of the step process that challenged.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Them more than others. I think the.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Amends part challenged me more than anything, and it was
because of.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The sense of self that I was hanging on to.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Like Marsha talked about before, I was so attached to
what I thought you thought about me. Nothing would humiliate
me more than to think that I looked small in
your eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Uh I would. I would tell my.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Story at a meeting of thirty people and twenty nine
had shake my hand and say, great story, Chris, that
was one of the best stories I've ever heard, and
one person to go you sounded a little bit pompous,
and I would go.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Home like, oh, God of Babas.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
You know, that's that's an unhealthy attachment to an ego
and a sense of self. Now for me to be
able to get past that, I had to do a
whole lot of spiritual work I did.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I had to do.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You know, there's there's a saying in AA we don't
care what your opinion is, We care what your feet
are doing.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
And that's really really true.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I believe with those that are alcoholic, your opinion, although
it may be interesting at four days sober, is not
as important as where your shoes are taking you.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
You know, are you going to a meeting. Are are you?
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Are you actually actually participating in this recovery process?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Now? Now the spiritual teacher, and I've had many, but
the spiritual.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Teacher that was the most impactful on my life again
was Joe. Joe was a man of extreme in many
many ways, and when it came time for him to
put into application spirituality, he.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Went further than anyone I've ever known. In AA.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He spent a year studying with an Indian shaman, Don
Coyas in Denver, you know, doing this sweat lodges and
you know all that stuff. Spent five years with him
under his tutelage, spent another five years with his zen
master in California, spend another five years with with Thomas Merton,
(20:15):
not Thomas Mertin, Thomas Keating, one of Thomas Merton's.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Proteges, and then five.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Years under the principal tutor of the Dali Lama in Dmsala, India.
This guy took it to extremes, you know. And and
what he had in the very very beginning was a
marvelous structure of spiritual mechanics that he never let go of.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
He never got too far in the door.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
You know that great uh, that great poem I stand
by the door.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Joe never went too far in to.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Be able to reach back out and help those who
were who were not as far along on the path.
And a lot of application of these spiritual teachings he
was able to able to apply them to recovery because listen,
twelve step recovery philosophy is spirituality one oh one. The
(21:12):
lessons that you learn in twelve step recovery philosophy are
applicable in every spiritual discipline. In Christianity, in Judaism, if
you're studying Hinduism or Tibetan Buddhism or zen Buddhism, you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Say, geez, that's step six or something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I mean, I mean the wonderful miracle I see of
Bill Wilson at three and a half years sober, having
his head far enough out of his ass to put
together these basic spiritual principles in the twelve steps still
(21:56):
still is remarkable to me. I don't know how you
would be if I would have written a book at
three and a half years sober.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
It would have been a pile of crap, you know.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So he was at the right place, at the right
time with the right people, and he took his job very,
very seriously, and there was a lot of input, you know,
the first one hundred or so, you know, there was
a lot of input and a lot of suggestions and
it was kind of an open, open system until you
know the final revisions. And I see that as our prerequisite.
(22:36):
What a prerequisite is.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Is before you move on, you need to take this class.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And I think as alcoholics there is room to broaden
and deepen our spiritual growth in a hundred forms of
practice and devotion.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
There really is.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
But if we skip the prerequisites of surrender, of identifying
that of our own unaided will, you know, our lives
are not going to be successful, you know on our
self will if we skip that, if we skip the
honesty that comes from doing a fourth and a fifth step,
(23:16):
and and that that that confessional aspect of of four
and five about what are what are you know, just
just how much sand our feet really are? You know,
how much how much clay we're really standing on? If
we skip six and seven, where we recognize that our
(23:37):
character defects are much larger than us and we need
a power greater than us to move past these character defects.
If we skip making things right for the harms that
we've caused, if we skip learning prayer and meditation as
a discipline a discipline, if we skip the the the
(24:01):
attitude of compassion and service that the twelve step really
points us toward. If we skip those lessons as an alcoholic,
our spiritual life is going to be empty. It's gonna
have periods of time where on the outside we can
look very very spiritual, indeed, but on the inside where
(24:25):
we're gonna be hollow, and we're gonna be, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
An empty gong.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
As as as the apostle Paul says, you know, the
clanging of a symbol, you know it really means nothing. So,
you know, spiritual growth has become probably the most the
most important part of my life. Got some other lessons
(24:53):
that I learned. I learned this lesson especially from Mark Houston,
is he would approach a spiritual book as a textbook.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
I can't say that I'm there yet.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
I like to read these books and I like to
apply certain pieces of them, but he would What he
would do is he would work with one book and
try to gather as much of the application of that
book as possible and put it into practice.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And I know some of the books that he used.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
And you could see, I think in no other person
I ever met or knew.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
You could see the power in Mark Houston.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
This whole thing, this whole recovery process, I believe, is
about freedom, and I believe it's about power. It's about
exposing ourselves to the actual power of God and allowing
allowing ourselves to be accessible to the power of God
(25:59):
moving in and through us and doing for us what
we cannot do for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
And you can see this power.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
You can see this power in certain people who have
done the application of.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
These principles in their lives.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They're not necessarily the smartest people, they're not necessarily the
coolest people, but they're the people who have done the
most application of these principles. And you can cut the
power coming out of them with a knife. And I
think we've all met and been exposed to people like that.
(26:37):
They can do things that are absolutely remarkable, and they
usually take no personal credit for it because they know
where the power comes from.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
They know it is not their power.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Every once in a while, I'm reading this great book
now called After the Ecstasy, The laundry. And what this
book talks about is it talks about as an innate
need in the human condition, we desire enlightenment. It's an
(27:13):
instinctual drive that I believe God instilled in us so
that we instinctively try to.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Head in the right direction. Now, there's a lot of
things that screw this up.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Money, power, sex, there's a lot of things that screw
up this drive in us. But I believe it's been
implanted in us to grow spiritually. That's why we feel
that vacancy sometimes with that God shaped hole. There are
a lot of things that mess us up, and there
are a lot of people who start the spiritual path
(27:48):
and go wrong. In this book, it talks about some
of the spiritual masters who've really screwed up big time.
It usually involves sex and power and money, and they
abuse the God given power. The power does not come
from the human condition. It comes from God. And then
(28:09):
once they get this power, they become drunk with it
and they can You know, once you have this spiritual power,
it's a lot easier to seduce, it's a lot easier
to gather money, and it's a lot easier to gain a.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Crew of people that will do for you.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
And there's a lot of abuse, and there's a lot
of stories about people who have gone wrong and the
disasters that follow. And I believe those are great lessons
because they remind one once again that this is not
our power. On a daily basis, we need to do
(28:55):
the things that we need to do to keep the
ego in check. There's an age old battle you can
go back in in the you can go back thousands
of thousands of years. The first the earliest literature that
we find, you know, Homer's Honesty.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I mean stuff that was written thousands and thousands of
years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
A lot of times it's it's stories about a hero
and how he had to overcome these temptations and how
he had to to try to do the next right thing,
even though it was not easy. And it talks about
this this duality, this conflict that we have in our
(29:42):
minds between the spirit and the ego, or the good
and the evil, or the devil and the God. I mean,
you will read about this over the course of written literature.
It's not something that's new. What we need to know
as alcoholics is we can't lose this battle, because if
(30:07):
we lose it The thing that keeps us safe and
protected from alcoholic death is a solid spiritual condition. And
the normal man out there walking up and down the road,
who maybe goes to church on Sunday, or maybe he's
practicing in an ashram, or you know, maybe maybe he
(30:28):
has his own own you know, different types of spiritual worship,
they can survive screwing it up. As alcoholics, we pay
the ultimate price for failure to adhere to these spiritual principles.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
The spiritual principles.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That Bill makes very very clear in Spirituality one oh one,
which is the book Alcoholics Anonymous. So that's an additional
warning to us as alcoholics. When the ego is left
unchecked in an alcoholic, the ego goes to the bar,
the ego goes to the copman, and there's usually not
(31:13):
a great outcome. Alcoholism and drug addiction. If you look
at it purely scientific from outside of the recovery fellowships,
it's a very very bleak landscape. Statistically, many, many more than.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Most of us die of this.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
There's a half life to crack addicts that's extraordinarily short.
There's a longer half life to alcoholics, but it's not
very long. Insurance companies understand that if we've had professional
treatment for these things, we're not a great risk for
life insurance. Looking at it objectively from outside, you can
(31:59):
see that more than.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Most of us die.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
And what I see is is the minority that escape
this fate are ones that embrace a spiritual path.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
They find the right way. And again, you don't have
to be smart to find the right way.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You just have to be persistent, and having a good
guide helps.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
In alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
In the twelve step world, I make it a suggestion
to people whenever I'm doing treatment commitments to be very
very discerning when you find a sponsor and do a
little bit of qualification, even though it may feel real
uncomfortable to be interviewing a perspective sponsor.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
There are many many people out there who have.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Not grown past tersary spirituality in alcoholics Anonymous, there are
a lot of people that you could ask to be
your sponsor who do not have real experience with the
twelve steps.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I know I did it myself.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
My first sponsor, who God loved him, kept me sober
enough to find recovery and find a correct path towards spirituality.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Early on, he shouldn't have even been in AA.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Okay, he was a speed freak who got arrested, went
to AA to keep from going to jail, and found
a social clique.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
It worked for him. You know, he liked crazy.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
People, so he became a meeting maker and he even
had a very serious service ethic liked he liked to
do things for people because.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
It made him feel good. But he wasn't an alcoholic.
I was a critically chronically, you know, really in trouble.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Alcoholic, and I went to him and he gave me
at least what he could. He wasn't trying to hurt me,
and he didn't even know he wasn't giving me the
right stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know, how do you know what? You don't know?
But what he did do was he gave me enough.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
For sobriety to at least last long enough for me
to find teachers who could teach me about spirituality and
about alcoholism. So finding the right guide, finding the right
teacher is important. You know, every single person that spoke
here today, they've got serious ass.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Sponsors and teachers.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And it's not necessarily the people in their home group,
although sometimes it is. Sometimes it's people many many states
away because they take this, they take placing themselves under
the care and direction of a spiritual guide very very seriously,
and they want the best possible guidance.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That they can get. And that is very very important
to me. Also, because this is not a game.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
If somewhere along the line, I become drunk with the
power that's not mine anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
I need to be accountable to somebody.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Somebody needs to have the spiritual consent to kick me,
and he has and say, Chris, your ego is running wild.
You you know, you need to you need to slow down,
You need to you know, we need to talk.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
I need somebody that will do that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And it's that's a life and death job for somebody,
you know. To continue to grow spiritually, you have to
find people who are ahead of you on the path.
A lot of times that's the right way to go.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
You need to find people.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Who are a little bit further down the road and
and who can who can continue to keep giving you
the guy that's going to continue to help you to
grow in understanding and effectiveness, to continue to participate in
the maintenance of your spiritual condition. And that's a very
(36:11):
that's a very very important part of our lives.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Now.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
If spirituality, if all it was was a treatment for
my alcoholism, I would do it anyway. But the great
news about spirituality is it offers you literally hundreds of remarkable,
incredible promises in your life. Your life starts to grow
(36:37):
so large that it's almost unbelievable when I think what
has been accomplished with me in the last five years.
Me the guy who could who could screw up a
guitar lesson.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
I mean, now, listen, this is this is me.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Prior to applying some of the spiritual principles, I wanted
to be a boy Scout, join the Boy Scouts, went
on one camping trip, wanted to learn the guitar, went and
took one.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Guitar lesson and stole the guitar.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Decided to join the wrestling team, did one practice, quit,
decided to go to college, spent spend three and a
half years getting six credits.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
You know, I mean, this is this is me.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
So I am telling you the things that have happened
in my life come as a direct result of the
power that flows in and through me. It's it's not
my power, it's not it's not necessarily reflective of the
work that I'm doing. The work that I'm doing empties
(37:46):
the vessel so that it can be filled with the power.
And you know, I again I said this, it's dangerous
to think that it's your power. But some of the
things that have been accomplished in my life in the
last list five years are bizarrely, you know, incredible. I
got a chance to do an XM and serious, serious
(38:09):
satellite radio show.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Just by accident.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I mean, I got interviewed on this on this radio show,
and the woman that owned that particular station said, Hey,
would you like to be the host from now on?
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I really liked what you said, so I said sure.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
I mean, you know, I didn't know anything about being
a host of a radio show, especially a satellite show
that went everywhere and had seventy affiliates from Calcutta through
London to San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And because because I was awake to.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Opportunity, and because there was a lack of self centered
fear in my life, because of that sense of guidance,
that intuitive sense of guidance that I that I was
awake to, I just said yes. I didn't say I
didn't say to myself, I'm.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Gonna suck at this and I can't. You know, I'm afraid.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
I just said yes because it was an awesome opportunity.
It was a show where you interviewed different people from
twelve Step fellowships. And you know, I was just a host.
I wasn't a member of any fellowship or anything. I
anonymously interviewed people from different twelve Step fellowships. I will
say this the strangest and scariest twelve step fellowship. The
(39:29):
people that I interviewed was Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Okay,
my buddy Dave and I are saying, hey, there's two
chicks coming from Sex and Love Addicts Anatomus.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
That should be interesting.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
By the end of the show, we were changing our
name and telling them we lived in a different state.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
We were scared. A relapse for them was multiple restraining orders,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
They were stalking some bitches and and you know, but anyway,
I had a great time doing you know, I went
I went from I went from that to uh, I
actually hosted a TV show, a music TV show for
a short period of time as a cable show.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I went from that to being asked by.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
A big recovery organization, a multi million dollar Recovery Foundation
to to put together a web platform and a web
broadcasting and interview addiction treatment professionals for the sole purpose
of highlighting the best practices out there in addiction treatment.
And and for two and a half years I did that,
(40:34):
and I flew all over the planet interviewing some really
really interesting people.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
You know, where is it? Where's that I'm a bad electrician?
Where where does that come from?
Speaker 2 (40:46):
You know, uh, somewhere along the way because I started
to become halfway.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Dependable in my life.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I went from being a bad electrician to getting into
facility service. And about a year and a half ago,
I was offered the job to take over an account
for a pharmaceutical.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Company running their facility department.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Now, being a facility director is it's a high level
job at these places because you're in charge of all
the processes that keep them being able to manufacture these
life saving drugs. I mean, I mean, if I screw
up the assembly line, stop, you know, it's a big
it's a big responsibility. And in the last year I've
(41:32):
been able to increase the scope.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Of that job four times.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I went from a two million dollar baseline to a
ten million dollar baseline.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
In a year, I became out of nineteen accounts, I became.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
The number one facility manager in the country for I
was number one in customer satisfaction and number two in
financial performance. And I'm an idiot, you know what I mean, Like,
I can't go I can't go to motor vehicle to
(42:03):
get my license back without being drunk.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
You know I did that one time.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I'm getting my license back for a third DWY and
I went there just as drunk as could be.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
That was a really bad move. You know, I was never.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Dependable at anything. You have to be dependable to be
able to do jobs like this. I get invited to
places like this. I have a group of friends who
have all come to me. Almost all of them have
(42:40):
come to me through the application of recovery principles in
one way or another, whether they're my sponsores or whether
they're just fellowship brothers, fellowship sisters.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And my biggest.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Problem today is the amount of time time I have
in the day, because I have so much opportunity and
so many people that you know, I want to connect
with at deeper levels that that I.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Don't have time to do. You know, that's my biggest
problem today that I don't have enough.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Time to do the great things that are in front
of me. You know, these friendships are these these are
people that would take a bullet for me. I've always
wanted friendships like that. But green Man and Weezer just
hung around until the coke was gone. You know, I
always wanted those types of friendships. I think we're a
(43:36):
tribal people instinctially, and we.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Need to be tribal. We need to have our.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Crew, and and today today I have that, and I
can I can.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Call on people, not that I need people that often.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Because if you successfully or even somewhat successive sccessfully uh
apply spiritual principles in your life, you know, you tend
to not get in too many jackpots, so things tend
to run pretty smooth in your life. But I've got
a crew of people that I can really really count on.
(44:17):
Some of the great promises in the book that I
see overlooked all the time. Certainly the ten step promises
are great promises. There are promises that we're that those
are the freedom promises.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
We're free. We do not need to be meeting dependent.
If we've recovered, we.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
Will be going back to meetings because that's the place
where there.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Are people to help.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
We're not going to be going back to meetings to
fill up like it's a spiritual gas pump, you know,
Like I had a real hard day at work today,
I'm going to double up on my meetings tonight.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
If you're doing that, you are going in the opposite
direction that you should be going in.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
You'll be going to meetings for the right reasons instead
of the selfish reasons.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
It will become an innate ethic to carry the message
to other people.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
It will become instinctual, and that you would you will
have an inner need to carry the message to other people.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
And that will come as a byproduct of recovery.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
You shouldn't need to.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Be encouraged to go to beginner's meetings or sponsor people.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
That will become automatic. And that is a great Uh,
that is a great benefit. You look at any of the.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Truly truly happy people, and they have some type of
a compassionate, charitable nature. They're doing something for somebody a
great A great example is this is one of my
sponsees who you know, who certainly surpassed the teacher.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
You know, some students asked the teacher. This guy was
one of them.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
He was actually running the Bazuka Bubblegum company, the Tops company,
and you remember Pokemon.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
Cards, that was him, Push Pops that was him.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Baseball Cards, Tops Cards, Bazuka Bubble bubble gum, now that
was him.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
He was running that company.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And when he started working with me, for whatever reason,
he just became absolutely one hundred percent willing to do
everything that was asked of him. That's rare, unfortunately, but
this guy just said, tell me what to do, and
he took it like it was a college, you know, assignment,
and he wanted to get an a and he just
(46:38):
went out and did it. And he went from making
half a million dollars a year to helping his company
downsize and downsize him out. And right now he's running
a soup kitchen because he volunteered at it for five years.
They loved him so much. They said, would you run
our soup kitchen for twenty thousand a year whatever? And
(47:00):
he said, I would be honored. That on the outside
looks like looks like a downward trajectory in your employment.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Line, it is anything.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
But in this guy's life, he went from being very
successful and inwardly empty to being more fold than probably
anyone I know with his spiritual practices.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
He's a go to guy if there are newcomers.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
There's nobody better than this guy because he has the
compassion to sit with these knuckleheads hour after hour after
hour and just listened and just keep handing them exercises
and encouraging to do step work. And now he has
a gigantic crew in North Jersey who are running around
(47:55):
sponsoring people. You know, to see this fellowship that we
crave grew up about us is amazing. It's amazing. And
the way to create a fellowship is to carry the
message to alcoholics in the way the book Alcoholics Anonymous
asks us to.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
Now you have a crew, you know, Peter, you know
what having a crew is like.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
You can call these guys any time and say hey,
I need you in Florida and they would be there.
You know, having this fellowship that you crave grew up
about you is absolutely amazing. The best years of our
lives are ahead of us.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
In the eighties, when I was.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Drinking, I was reflecting on how fun it was at
the high school parties. You know, you'd get drunk out
of your mind, and that, you know, there the music
it'd be on, and and there'd be a fight and
a car crash, and you'd be inappropriate with the women,
and they'd be okay with it, you know, and everything
was just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
At least that's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
And as the years went by, I reflected I lived
in the past. I reflected back on these great years
that I had and wondered where it had all gone
and where.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
It had gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
One great promise is the best years of our life
are ahead of us. Some of the things that happened
through the application of spiritual principles is Peter talked about this,
also being trapped in the past and having anxiety of
the future.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
They talked about living in the now, living in the now,
be here now, living in the now.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
I didn't know what they were talking about in early sobriety,
because I hadn't done any of the things that you
need to do to be able to clean yourself up
enough so that you can be present to this holy instant.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
There is only the now.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
The past is but a memory, in the future is uncertain.
Only this holy instant, and to be able to embrace
it and be comfortable with it is one of the
true gifts of a spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
You know, so many people die from anxiety.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
The things that are brought on by anxiety disorders, the
hypertension and you know, the uh, the cardiovascular problems and
cancer and all this other stuff is really brought on by.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
An inability to live in the now.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
So much of our time is wasted regretting the past,
thinking about what we should have done and the mistakes
we made, and if only we could go back in
time and do it differently. That's a completely waste, a
complete waste of the holy now. And to be able
to embrace that, to be able to sit in the silence.
(51:01):
We cannot sit in the silence when we're dragging knapsacks
full of crap from our past, or we're worried about
what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
In the future. We can't sit in that silence.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
And I found personally that the true healing of my
spirit comes in that deep silence and that deep connection
to my maker, to the God of my understanding. That's
where the true healing is. This has been one of
(51:34):
my favorite workshops that I've ever gone on. You know,
every single person here, thank you so much for coming.
This was a sojourn, you know, this was this was
more than just going down.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
The street to the meeting.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
But I think we've experienced I think we've all experienced
something here this weekend that we're going to be able
to take with us. And if you've learned anything here,
if anything is really stuck with you, if anything has
disturbed you, sit with that and turn it into something
(52:07):
that can be applicable to your spiritual growth. Take some
of these lessons that you've learned, if you've learned anything,
and apply them as the drowning would seize a life preserver.
And if that's the case, this has been with anyone,
this has been an incredibly worthwhile venture for me.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Thank you for being ready
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