09 - Step One: Body - Craving

0:00 good morning good afternoon good evening my name is herb i'm an alcoholic welcome to our assume workshop on the 12-step application please join me in prayer for an open mind god please set aside everything that i think i know about myself my brokenness the 12 steps in you for an open mind and a new experience of myself my brokenness the 12 steps and especially you

0:48 please join me in the serenity prayer god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference we are on step one we've officially started and we're looking at one piece of the first step you can see there on the screen and you know the first step probably by heart it has two parts divided by the dash when i was 10 years sober going through this work for the third time with a step guide that dash became very

1:34 significant perhaps it will for you when we get to unmanageability right now we're focused on the first half of the first step we admitted we were powerless over alcohol of course the demographic of this group is much broader than just alcohol much broader than any substance addiction pretty easy to define a substance being alcohol drugs and food but it includes any addiction the professionals call process addiction meaning there's no substance involved but the dynamic of the individual in relationship to the process

2:20 is the same as the substance addiction my very informal definition of addiction as you know i'm not a scientist i'm not degreed i'm not certified i'm fairly knowledgeable because of my exposure through the 12-step program my sobriety date is february of 1984. i just celebrated 37 years and for the last 32 i've been in hot pursuit of expanding and deepening my spiritual awakening as well as shining the light on the path for other people to have their own experience of waking up

3:11 like the dimmer switch i refer to the lights go on at a low voltage but if we stay gently pressed up against the dimmer switch with our activity one day at a time one step at a time one action at a time taking direction from somebody who knows what they're doing who similarly has had experience of using the steps as a methodology for waking up we stay gently pressed up against the dimmer switch and the lights get brighter addiction is a problem that's why we've come to a 12-step fellowship addiction might be

3:56 a process and it's going to be interesting and a learning experience for all of us to hear the process addiction people talk about how they connect the dots paralleling the substance addiction people or especially the alcohol people the book big book was written for alcoholics by alcoholics and we're interpreting it and broadening out the vocabulary to encompass everybody else that has a problem with addiction that first half of the first step is about as the doctor's opinion said something's wrong with our body something's wrong with our mind right now we're focused on the first half of the first half of the first step

4:44 so the two parts of that first half we're looking at the body the doctor's opinion eventually we'll look at the spiritual malady a problem of the will willpower and a problem of the spirit a spiritual malady i keep saying it so that you get used to the model that i use to help you understand and then unpack your experience with step one so that you can have a more profound a deeper experience with step one bill calls it the foundation upon which we're going to build a spiritual arch through which we're going to walk to a new freedom all of those words come directly out of the big book and you'll understand them

5:31 in four months five months if you don't now step one is the foundation step two is the cornerstone and step three is the keystone the next time we hear about the spiritual arch as at the end of the fifth step on page 75 and he says now we've walked through the arch bill doesn't say this the big book doesn't say this but i'm assuming then that the building blocks of the component parts of step four are what constitute the arch we look at resentment we look at fear we look at dishonesty we look at secrets

6:20 and when we identify the underlying nature of these problems we go deep down into the nature of human nature what is in us that's broken that needs to be healed we become brain dead to the word powerless because we're we hear it and we use it all the time and it becomes meaningless because we use it so many times in so many ways and we don't think about it we don't feel it we don't experience it

7:06 hopefully at the end of step one process all aspects of step one certainly with regard to the addiction which is a presenting problem it is a problem it's just not the problem the problem is unmanageability hopefully at the end of this you'll be able to in a deep meaningful way use a synonym for powerlessness perhaps no choice that will bring goosebumps to you because it will recall for you immediately this darkness of no choice no choice with regard to our addiction

7:53 that's the least of our problems the most of our problems the human problem is that we have no choice with regard to our free will our free will is not free in many many many circumstances and that's the unmanageability that bill talks about in step 10 that we're not cured of and that we have a daily reprieve of that selfishness and self-centeredness which is manifest in that resentment and that fear and that dishonesty and in keeping those secrets powerless and we looked at the body we are looking at it right now in the

8:38 doctor's opinion and he uses terms that we think we know but i keep challenging you and i hope you hear it he uses the word allergy as a man as a metaphor it's not science he's a medical doctor but he's saying it looks like it acts like we can understand it when we use the term allergy and then he uses a word craving which really confuses us because we know what a craving is it's a desire for something and the dictionary backs us up but when we read the doctor's opinion very carefully

9:25 he's using craving in a very different way he's using it in a medical definition he's using it in a biological definition he's saying there's something wrong with your body in the same way that you have an allergy to cats or you have an allergy to shellfish or you have an allergy to hay um dust or whatever triggers some really uncomfortable physical response he said that's the metaphor that i'm using for your addiction when you engage either by ingesting it alcohol drugs or food

10:12 or beginning an action or a thought or a feeling process addiction something's released in your body a chemical he doesn't talk this specifically so i'm trying to make his definitions and his vocabulary useful to us i call it a biological mandate a biological imperative once i engage there's a trigger biological trigger that goes off in me that creates a craving and he doesn't mean

10:58 thought he doesn't mean feeling he doesn't mean aware he doesn't mean conscious he means a biological chemical reaction which we may not even be aware of except for how it manifests and that is i lose control it's really simple everything after the first drink or the first action is predictable and a story and it's not relevant after the first drink after the first engagement after the first action it's not relevant because there's only one word for you if

11:44 you're an addict you lose control now there's also obviously some variations on individuals here i've mentioned my wife was a chronic alcoholic and she grew into that after 10 15 years of drinking on a daily basis then for the last 10 years of her drinking she drank every day and every day she drank she drank so she passed out not mine i did not drink every day i would go a day or a week or a month without a drink and when i did have a drink

12:29 probably over 50 percent of the time even in the last year i would have the one or two that i intended and i would continue doing whatever it was i had intended to do i call that a periodic it obviously masks the truth from me or from anybody who can relate to that as a parallel experience once i take the drink when the trigger is pulled the craving begins my chemicals demand more chemical of the alcohol and i have what i call a compulsion

13:15 i don't know it i don't feel it i don't think it i don't realize it even the next day after 30 years of that experience periodically i do not put the dots together we're artificially separating the body and the mind because obviously there's something insane about that that i didn't see that i didn't see and i didn't put the dots together but i'm we're going to talk about the mind problem in a little bit not today and then we'll talk about the will problem even later so today i want to talk about the 20 questions if in fact you applied them to the

14:01 particular issue that you're attempting to focus on whether you know you have an addiction or not you're have an open mind and an open heart and you're asking some questions or even if you're a committed alcoholic and you've been sober for 10 or 20 or 30 years i'm asking you to put it on the radar screen and take a look at it using these questions these are not the 20 questions from the university that you've seen so many times in meetings or in recovery centers this i use that as a springboard to develop my own questionnaire which includes not only alcohol and drugs and food but it also includes behavior so that we

14:49 can try to create a similar experience for the process addiction people and then we're also going to take a look at and mostly spend the time looking at the worksheet on the body it's not a test please it's a prompter it's the most important thing for me was to get some information about the problem in the hospital program and to do an autobiography of my relationship with alcohol not a general autobiography as i've mentioned but a specific autobiography of my relationship with alcohol going from my first drink at age 12 what did i drink how much did i drink

15:35 what happened when i drank for the next 30 years just the drinking episodes what did i drink when did i drink how did i drink how much did i drink what happened and when i did that and then read it out to somebody kind of an inventory of my relationship with alcohol that began to open the door for me to see that i had not seen that i had a problem with alcohol and that began my journey so this similarly is actually asking you to look specifically at your experience not generally not vaguely not assuming

16:22 that you're an alcoholic or that you're an al-anon but what makes it so what's my experience with addiction the one i'm looking at or the one that i'm exploring looking at because there are many people here who have been in a 12-step program for an identified addiction and now they know that there's trouble in their lives from some other possible behavior or substance that second question what happens when i indulge in this addiction it asks for three specific examples

17:07 in 1968 i was being entertained by a group of insurance executives for a luncheon celebrating a case that i had given them and that we had successfully closed and helped a employer with that was the work that i did for 40 years i loved my work and i was good at it and this was early in my career we went to a luncheon and it was going to be a big celebration there were eight people big round table private room and somebody was hosting it and they were buying and they brought in the wine and it was like wonderful but i had a business meeting at three o'clock that i needed to leave for

17:53 and i was in training to become a therapist i was in graduate school to become a psychologist and i had that list of potential clients to look at to look after in the evening so i had a full afternoon and evening already pre-planned big commitments but i began drinking and i stayed there till 10 o'clock and then i was going to drive and i thought i still had time to make some of my appointments that's how delusional and drunk i was fortunately the the city police pulled me over and put me in jail and that was my first 502. but in those days it was like a traffic

18:40 ticket and so i there were no consequences i called a friend of mine an attorney he went to court for me i wrote him a check i wrote the court a check it was like paying a ticket but i'm bringing it up not to talk about the implications or ramifications because there weren't any there was no thought at all for me no embarrassment a little embarrassment but not not not so much that i connected to drinking but i look back on that despite the fact i had lots of responsibilities not the least of which was coming home to a family safe but i had other responsibilities connected to my work and my educational ambitions and people's lives

19:27 and i just blew it off the alcohol hijacked me i once i began to drink i lost control um the assignment we're moving into the mind next week so it's assignment four number four the uh the whole assignment is to read pages 23 to 43 but i want you to do half of that well approximately half page 23 to 35 read and highlight that and um then uh examine the mind worksheet you don't need to complete it yet obviously there hasn't

20:13 been any teaching on it or any commentary on the big book until the next two weeks but uh be aware of the questions the key question in the same way that i said simply the body question is what happens when i engage not not 30 minutes from now not tomorrow but what happens immediately after i engage that's the body question the mind question is what happens just before you engage what are you thinking feeling or aware of within two minutes of a relapse what are you thinking feeling or aware

20:58 of within two minutes of a relapse and will that's the real challenge the whole no choice concept is no choice after i begin no choice when i stop i will begin again and we'll be looking at that very deeply there's some other items on that assignment for in terms of definitions item number one so do that the uh page numbers i gave you are from item number two but just pages 23 to 35 uh would be sufficient all right so i want to use the majority of time

21:45 tonight to have you share i'd like you to focus on the body discussion although you're obviously welcome to talk about spiritual awakening step 11 meditation step 10 inventory anything in the roman numerals that lead up to the doctor's opinion the doctor's opinion anything about bill's story i want to focus on the body problem because that's where we're at in step one but it's open season on everything that we've covered i don't want to take a look ahead and talk about the mind or manageability that just gets in the way of an orderly

22:31 progression although my personal experience was progressive over three different journeys through the steps with three different men over a 10-year period i've brought that all together now and i want to give you the progression in an orderly fashion over the next three months with regard to step one two or three classes ago you had gone through and you briefly mentioned it tonight the archway and the keystone and you highlighted those parts in the text i was wondering if it's possible to get those page numbers again oh yes yes

23:16 uh page 47 or step 2 cornerstone page 63 for or maybe it's 62 for the um keystone for the step 3 and page 75 for at the end of the step uh at the step five uh conclusion he talks about walking through the arch to a new freedom thank you thank you that's a great question thank you for asking when i um so i'm looking at the chart the body starting with abstinence and compulsion yeah craving and allergy so um i started drinking when i was 14

24:01 and um i just had it and i got high off it and i loved it and i kept doing it um but that was the only reason that i i drank i i i didn't feel like i had necessarily a compulsion or a craving wait wait wait it has nothing to do with how you feel okay there's nothing to do with how you think okay okay are you what are you in a 12-step program yes which one um i was doing uh uh joe and charlie's no no no are you in a 12-step fellowship yes it's this right here isn't it no this isn't a 12-step fellowship okay i don't understand your question i'm sorry well then you're not in one

24:47 okay no well yes do i attend meetings and what am i part of the fellowship wait wait what kind of meetings uh aaa daily reflections meetings oh so you're in a a then yes absolutely oh well that would be the answer to the question what 12-step fellowship are you in oh that's a fellowship yes it is all right all right and how long have you been in it um well i quit drinking a year ago on march 9th so i've been in it since march 9th why did you quit drinking um because i couldn't get drunk anymore uh interesting um and um it wasn't fun

25:33 you know i've heard that i don't understand it but it's many people's experience so yeah that's not foreign information to me so when you were drinking you said you started around 12 or 14 or whatever it was did you ever lose control of your drinking yes many many many many many times see that's the only point here everything else you said is irrelevant okay right see because did you in oh well no let me ask a different question did you intend to lose control no no no no now we're getting some traction i was powerlessness i was powerless i loved to drink i loved the taste i loved

26:18 the feeling i drank i never intended to lose control i lost control regularly well why you're an intelligent man with lots of willpower i'm assuming in many other areas why did you lose control i couldn't stop well no i understand that but why that's a tough question no no it's not a tough question why did i lose control the doctor has an opinion on that what's the doctor's opinion that it's an allergy um okay tell me what your thoughts are about analogy um well literally an allergy means be

27:04 allergic to something and what would happen if you're allergic to something you'd get an adverse reaction if you did that exactly an adverse biological reaction yes all right so he also uses the term craving what do you think he means by that um well when i think of craving i think of chocolate and that's what you think that's what i'm trying to change okay all right all right what have i spent time talking about in terms of the definition or the use of the word craving in the doctor's opinion when does it occur after the first drink so that's not anticipating the first drink right that's after the drink

27:52 i lose control and he says there's something in your chemistry that's corrupt you put alcohol into your chemistry and it sets you on fire right and you want to douse it with more alcohol i mean you're not even thinking about it but it's what you're doing you're losing control yeah that makes sense yep well connected to your experience and that's where i i asked you did you ever lose control did you lose it more than once or twice and you're saying yeah from the times that i joined a.a for god's sakes that was three right right

28:38 the 20 questions um i'm in oa i'm a compulsive overeater i've been in a way in and out since 88. these questions were very juicy [Laughter] and good i loved it it's a juicy word yes i love that word um and the body uh questions were wonderful i know i'm a food addict i have lots of examples and i did that what this led into with your process i really started to question what's deeper what else is going on and i suddenly realized that

29:25 i'm addicted to being codependent okay and now i can hear every therapist i've ever had my entire life laughing their ass off you mean i finally got it yeah right yeah because i finally got it so but when we're talking about the body and the the addiction as an allergy i don't know how to connect the codependency process to that tell me an example that you that you have of your own experience of codependency observable behavior yeah uh one of them is there's a couple of nurses at work

30:13 that in i gossip with one about the other are you a nurse oh yeah you're probably using a profession as a result of your codependency i've had many therapists point that out to me but it's a good thing it's a good thing the the man who was my spiritual director said herb you're a narcissist he said but you're doing a lot of good helping people so keep that up and that's helping your narcissism may be managed he said god god writes straight with crooked lines i love that i love that quote yeah yeah yeah all right so you have uh you have

30:58 this relationship with the other nurses or you don't or you what where's the codependency where the codependency is i'm cutting the other nurse down and i feel so superior and la-de-da yeah so now you're answering your own question aren't you yeah yeah you get some juice i do there you go okay it's probably biochemical yeah yeah we don't have to get scientific with it and you use the word juicy and that's exactly what you get from

31:43 from this feeling superior okay [Music] number two what happens when i indulge in this addiction and i'm a food addict allergic to flour sugar and quantities and if i take one bite one bite of sugar or flour or if i eat an ounce less or an ounce more in my mind it triggers this obsessive compulsive addictive thinking of more and more and more opening cupboards

32:29 eating things that i normally wouldn't eat binging when i normally never binge in my life until i you know figured out i was a food addict i didn't know i was a food addict for many years and it changes my behavior yeah so bad i become abusive verbally um and it brought back to mind when my daughter was in grade school and i was high on sugar and i actually went to a store and yelled at a clerk in front of my young daughter about something she had sold for a project that didn't work

33:15 and then i'm leaving the store thinking oh my what did i do i need to apologize so so i i i'm listening to some of the story but we're not going to hear a lot of the story because it's not about the story it's totally predictable once you take the bite you lose control and it changes your body and it changes your mind it changes your emotions yeah and i and i cannot stop once i get that i can't stop and so again the doctor's opinion says that he has an opinion about why you can't stop what's your understanding now of it from the discussions that we've been having why can't you stop well

34:01 i have an allergy and it creates a craving and it's a chemical imbalance i mean i cannot process it like i used to years ago like i years ago i don't think i was a food addict when i was young yeah it's a profession yeah somewhere along the line i passed the ability to say no somehow and what you also illustrated and thank you for sharing it um is that it's not just the body it does affect the emotions it does affect the thinking we're artificially making separations between the body and the mind very artificially so that we can understand the separate components so i'm not even going to talk about the emotions and the mind part

34:46 because i want to stay with the body part and then the next time i'm going to give the assignment later on to to move into the mind for our discussion next week okay yeah and you're just like an allergy to like i'm allergic to uh preservatives metabisulfites and if i take this preservative it affects my body chemically and i can literally say i blow up yeah literally i get heavy yeah because of my addiction yeah it is truly an allergy yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's the manifest that's the physical manifestation of it not just the fat that comes with overeating but the chemical change in the body system that creates bloating right yeah

35:32 thank you thank you um i'm curious about dealing with a spouse that's a workaholic that has no idea about any of this 12-step aaa stuff yeah yeah do you have a sponsor okay yeah talk to your sponsor about that but also um number one is he asking for help he doesn't even think it's a thing or even none of your business yeah and i have to say it cold and black

36:18 and white yeah now of course it's your business you're his wife and you're concerned of course but that's where you talk to a sponsor and you may put your toes into alan on a little bit and see what's going on there okay i i did send him the 20 questions of course you did i know i just was like oh just check this you did all right absolutely thank you santa's little helper thanks herb um question is from the body workshop it says what is my experience with addiction what can you get more can you be more specific or let us know let me know how i could work dig into

37:04 that a little and what you mean um what's your what's the addiction that you're holding in your question right now in your mind uh i am an alcoholic so it'd be the addiction to alcohol but as i'm in this workshop i'm for sure looking at my food and sugar addiction but okay oh so how long have you been in uh dealing with your uh alcohol addiction uh i've been sober in aaa since 1998. well good long stretch so now you're looking at food and what else food and sugar okay together okay so in food and sugar what does addiction mean to you

37:52 it means it means i i can't i can't stop i can't stop with it do you have a for example in your head right now as you're thinking about it a very specific example about where you lost control yeah after dinner tonight i had three in the course of the last three months i put on 25 pounds from eating compulsively and after dinner tonight before i got on this workshop i had one ice cream thing and then i came back here to attend the session and i went and got two more so it's just it's just like okay all right so that's an example yeah are you in a food program at this

38:38 point or you're just concerned and considering i have been in a food program over the years i don't like being in food programs all right so you're not in a food program right now correct that's correct but you're concerned about your relationship with food yes that's correct and what was your intention with regard to the first dish of ice cream what was my intention yeah dessert you were going to have dessert right yeah yeah yeah did it include two more bowls after that your original intention no it didn't that way oh what maybe in

39:24 the back of my head because i purchased the stuff i purchased the things you'll always eat everything you purchase at once no oh so this is different then yeah okay so are you answering your question now what is my experience with addiction i suppose that's what you mean well i don't know what you call it you intended to have a bowl of ice cream you're concerned about gaining 40 pounds and you went back for two more bowls yeah that's a real healthy attitude that's my experience of addiction then is well i don't know i don't know that would be i don't judge

40:11 that you it's up to you is that behavior that you intended it's really hard to lose weight on three bowls of ice cream a night although you could do it by eliminating everything else all right got it all right so thanks very much thanks for coming from an al-anon perspective issues with control and anger thank you received a phone call phone call triggered me and like that i started to spiral i so what what was the what was the nature of the phone call that triggered you um it was my once a week

40:58 video call with my children that uh i have a order of protection against me so i don't get to see them in the nature of all honesty um you know wonderful call with the kids um but as the information floods into what been going on all stuff out of my control that i am attempting to give it up and let it go to god um i start spiraling i have no control over this situation so after the call was over i felt compelled to try and track down someone i hadn't spoken to in over a decade because i know that there's someone that if i was able to

41:43 get a hold of i can manipulate control i can i'm feeling bad about my life i want to destroy someone else's life to the point that i called a perfectly random stranger to be like hey is your daughter so and so can you give her a message with my name and number and tell her give me a call and then and i appreciate the laugh so so the real issue is here you you you have a weekly call video call with your children but this particular call set up the spiral or do you spiral every time i'd say a spiral every time this one just all right so there you go worse so see again i mean i'll let you go for a little bit yeah but but again everything after

42:32 the awareness of the i stopped i i i got into a spiral everything after that is just story i do like my stories well no we all do and i am absolutely not dismissing the stories i'm just saying it's not necessary because all we're looking for right now is the evidence that you have in addiction and the doctor says once you take a drink or once you begin a spiral you're out of control we can stop the conversation all right then that's why i asked about the regularity of it and you said well it happens every time okay yeah of course now it could have been a periodic situation and then it would have been a little more difficult but when it's happening every time then

43:20 yeah there's pretty conclusive it's you have this whatever it is and that's up to you to now to what what the trigger points are to kind of come to grips with that as we go through this work and just i do not drink i do not use drugs i do not have the luxury of saying i also have a substance addiction or anything this is pure unadulterated inner madness well okay i mean a bit dramatic but no you're i'm very dramatic i'm a dramatic oh no you're a run-of-the-mill not very special addict you just happen to have a codependency you you have an al-anon codependency here and you have this little trigger thing not not little i'm not dismissing it but

44:07 it's it's like everybody else's you're not you're not unique and special although you have this this um constellation of stuff that goes on that creates an awful lot of suffering for you and other people why do i love the suffering why do i love causing the suffering now and to myself but other people i can't i don't know the answer yet but you no but it's one it's a gift that you have the question and you'll hear me say that regularly it's not a dodge i really sincerely mean it the question is so important that you have it and i could hear it it's resonating deeply in your soul that question and as you unpack step one you might

44:54 but probably not get an answer but as you unpack step four you will definitely get an answer to that question understood all right thank you as always no thanks wonderful conversation i just wanted to say that yeah concentrating on this here in your your lectures has made me aware suddenly that i have something i haven't known i felt before again it's helping you have a question here because you're observing some behavior that you suspect is uh potentially going to lead to trouble so you're now you're asking a question okay so what's going on wonderful that's great it's not the behavior it's the physiological reaction i mean like we get from alcohol or from

45:41 rescuing somebody right and that got me into trouble but so far i don't know about this yet anyway that's all i wanted yeah thank you yeah but but so it's wonderful that you're in the workshop so that you can have the question so that you can intervene on yourself before you get in trouble thanks very much that's absolutely true enough to thank you for that having worked the steps uh in aaa i'm focused right now on working them from an allen perspective more focused on symptoms related to relationships and behaviors and things like that and so i'm wondering if you have any guidance or advice for shifting my perspective to

46:28 to look at this stuff from this other other place well um the advice is to look at your experience to get clear as to what you're meaning by a problem that brings you to al and on a problem that means relationship to you what's the problem oh you know squirrely boundaries um that's very vague how about being specific uh being closed off or too open inappropriately in relation bill's still kind of uh vague i'm i'm looking for some behavior um over sharing uh with people in a professional

47:13 situation or withholding uh emotions from people in a more personal situation all right so what do you get out of that i would think you know protection from the closer relationships you know i'm guarding something from the relationships maybe it's this kind of questioning though that you need to do for yourself is why are you even considering uh al anon what's the problem with the relationship what's underneath the over sharing or the undersharing there's a benefit and a value to you for some reason and obviously you're bringing it up because it's a problem

47:59 nobody goes to al-anon because they think it's a good idea well you know having identified character defects i've been sort of pursuing them through al-anon work why why don't you just pursue them through steps six and seven well look i guess because i've because i've done that apparently not if you're still having them well that that would be one perspective so your guidance in this situation would be what continue asking questions about why you're thinking about al-anon what really is the but get away from this vagary business

48:46 get specific what's the nature of the behavior what's the nature of the thought what's the nature of the feelings that is giving you this sense that there's something amiss i mean i actually don't know but i'm i'm challenging you and the balance of the group here especially the allendons to come forth with the vocabulary with the experiences because it's not my vocabulary it's not my experience and they can probably help you and then you can help me develop some more experience to help people like yourself get the vocabulary in the experience does that all make sense absolutely that would be ideal yeah yeah yeah so i'm so glad that you shared but here's the suggestion that you asked for

49:32 is get much more specific with what your what you think is the source of the problem and and and stay with those questions and then listen to people's responses who might be in al-anon or coda or adult children of alcoholic or something along the relationship line all right thank you um i just wanted to i'll quickly say i'll give an example in al-anon of what happens when i am using is someone will have a crisis situation i will come to their aid i will do everything in my power to help solve that crisis i will drop all of my responsibilities i will get a

50:17 high and i lose time and so that's where the under earning comes in for me and um but the key there though there's there's a feeling of relation a rush adrenaline of some kind i don't want to put any chemical terms on it but uh stay with the the the general term so that's what you're getting out of it yeah correct and it actually does include i'm getting a dopamine head yeah i'm trying to avoid the science of it because i don't want to get into science but the feeling the feelings are great okay well it helps draw a line for me so um so my the way i tell i'm in anything i was i'm in a four step and i had a step one experience because having done these worksheets over the years i could tell my body in

51:05 reaction to interacting with this person was getting a hit was getting an obsession i was losing time i was unable to do certain things and i didn't know what was going on i just knew i was having a step one experience and i couldn't see what i couldn't see but i sensed something was different but anyway so my point is i just want to go to the under earning and time deading which is really what it's about about um not being able to manage your time and and for me it really is all the symptoms of under earning are the symptoms of adhd which i have um and it's it's more like when i i can't when i start i can't keep going is kind of the the difficult thing here

51:51 and it is avoidance but i cannot plan um i cannot estimate time well i cannot prioritize and it's only when i realized that i had no choice over whatever was happening that i was able to get out of the shame of you should right this is an excuse you should um be able to do this but once i do that and i connect because as soon as i go to no choice i connect and um and i did have a conversation with her the other day however where it was clear to me that you know some people might see something as an explanation and some people might see as an excuse and that's each person's determination however i did realize that since you

52:38 don't have this issue just like an alcoholic can only help an alcoholic yes i understood in that moment when i was talking to you that i don't need to explain to you and it was such a helpful cure for my codependency in that moment something got lifted of like oh i don't need him to get it because i know and the excuse for me that was coming up was me needing to prove or show to someone else what's going on with me in order to address it see the and the benefit of that is you're able to do that for two reasons or at least two number one is you have some information now about how you work internally and number two you have some

53:25 experience now of actually being able to understand it and cope with it and deal with it effectively not all the time but at least you have some and and so i'm saying that for everybody else's sake we get this information and we get some experience and we're able to deal more effectively with ourselves and the last thing i'll say is um another thing you really enunciated in that call was like this is your process and you need help like you need help ask for the help you need and that's up to you that's your responsibility and so i also do you know i have needed outside help and i have needed things that have been essential in this process because this is

54:10 work it's hard work and i owe it to myself to get the support i need and um thanks sir thanks so much my question is kind of twofold and it gets into your body questions and the questionnaire and you often hear people talk about an addictive personality and i don't know if on your 20 questions if you start ask answering yes yes yes yes yes yes and then you start the default answers yes um wait let's let's let's stay with that because what you're saying is people think it's a test and and they want to get through it and and they're taking the easier softer

54:57 way and that's not what it is it's not a test it's it's a challenge it's an opportunity for you to ask the question of yourself experientially not here in your head not here in how you feel but how do your feet move in relationship to the question so i'm hoping that's what people will do and i don't believe in the uh the uh the addictive personality okay i'm not a psychologist but maybe they do well i wondered about that because i answered yes to a lot of well to the all basically all of the questions i'd have to double check to see what my percentage is but when i also did the body and i

55:42 started looking at the body question i fall in more than one camp from uh once i start i can't stop yeah and i'm wondering i'm rendering how to parse that together because i've often heard people talk about you need to focus on your primary addiction i agree with that so what is primary addiction to you like how do you because all these things i'm alcoholic i'm an alcoholic there's a high likelihood i have an a co-dependent component in me all right i'm aware of it i've read some books on it i've never done anything in terms of personally exploring it but i'm pretty confident that there's a

56:29 level of codependency in me which comes from being in a house where there was a raging alcoholic and an out of control al-anon there's got to be those process addiction dynamics in me but i think my primary with my focus on my primary program i'm able to deal effectively with it by my standards i i i sometimes recommend to people if they have a addiction problem of substance like alcohol or drugs that sometimes they do need and want to have and benefit from going to al-anon all right and so they get a sponsor with maybe the same kind of experience or

57:14 they get two different sponsors to help them navigate their program and maybe the difference in the step process so the i'm assuming then that you have multiple behaviors that are compulsive and i do understand compulsive personality and that is a personality disorder but i don't understand addictive personality i don't i think it's a it's a it's it's loose nomenclature vocabulary in aaa meetings to cover this kind of uh repetitive behavior which probably has a better word for it in the in the psychological diagnosis but i'm not capable of doing that

58:00 okay so i mean isn't it interesting that you're having this experience though and so what is the one that is here's how i define primary the one that is creating the most difficulty in your life in terms of quality and it might be that i'm an alcoholic who's developed a pornographic uh or pornography uh addiction and the alcohol isn't a problem although that's my primary addiction it has now manifest into pornography as an addiction i'm actually losing jobs and losing relationships as a result of it this is not my experience now i'm

58:46 talking about people that i work with and um i'll talk much more about that when we get into unmanageability to spiritual melody the bill says that if you don't treat the spiritual malady all right then we play guacamole he doesn't say that but essentially yeah well and i and i would say i sort of have the whack-a-mole style because it's like i get one sort of i'll use the word control it often slips out and i'll kind of get one managed and then poof another one will pop up i get that because you're dealing with symptoms well and i don't disagree with that yeah and i i yeah even alpha bill says in the big book alcohol is a symptom

59:32 alcohol is a symbol it's not the problem he says it in the big book page 64 plays 102 i believe all right alcohol's not the problem he says it in other places too the problem is unmanageability the problem is in the book a spiritual malady i my proposition in my vocabularies the problem is human nature yeah and we'll see that when i unpack unmanageability and then y'all make up your own mind as to the vocabulary that you want to use concerning spiritual or human i forget how you worded it you were quite nice about you didn't know what you didn't know yeah that's it and i believe there's

1:00:20 something there's some sort of common threads in in all this yes there is your sculpture is correct yeah i don't know yet i have a suspicion of a few things but that's because they're easy yeah well great it's great that we've created the energy in you with a question because now as we make progress there's going to be you know there's going to be stuff that's get some flesh that it gets put on the skeleton thank you very much thank you wonderful my um questions were around this do i have an addiction questionnaire as well and it it i also answered yes to every

1:01:08 answer more or less and then um [Music] the other day i was also in a meeting and um that that they brought up the subject of al-anon and anyway i went on one of those and i because i'm a child of a alcoholic as well and um and i answered yes to most of those so i just wondered like is it is that the usual experience because i see you know what um i i don't know the answer to that because i've i'm not i'm just unaware of that yeah okay fair enough i mean it almost doesn't matter does it because it's your experience yeah fair enough um so that that was just a brief question but surrounding addiction and i would say my primary addiction is alcoholism

1:01:54 um in alcoholism when i was an active drinker um i had multiple other addictions which i would say supported that addiction right like be it drug use um tobacco use as a byproduct or sex yeah i'm sure um so that was during active addiction outside of active addiction i'm experiencing the other aspect of of the now that i have removed the primary addiction of alcohol and drugs and tobacco there's other areas which absolutely my body is just or my my person is naturally gravitating towards yeah well you've got to find some way to

1:02:39 reduce the tension exactly so is there can you suggest or provide some insight into how that might yeah stay with us yeah for once dave i don't want to be glib but i'm also going to say the problem will become very clear when we get to unmanageability unmanageability is the root of our problem and i'm quoting the big book page 62. you can take a look at those two paragraphs they're the silver bullet that describes the exact nature of unmanageability i don't mind a bit you you kind of like do the reading because we're raising the issue we're raising the questions i don't want to talk about it but i mean i'll i'll help you feed your question absolutely all right all right thanks very much my

1:03:27 experience with my own life and with the people i've sponsored we all have a problem with time management you know it's like this belief that you can get 26 hours in a 24-hour day and it's a it it's a you know and i'm thinking is that the time dating thing is that like i don't know you just sort of maybe again crazy about this again you're you're hearing new experiences which are raising questions in you and you don't have to have an answer but it's really important to have a question so that you can in fact discern if there's an issue here with you in terms of time now it could be

1:04:13 that you're a workaholic well i was i was a very adamant practicing workaholic before i retired yes and i was in therapy over being a workaholic i had to have rules about how i changed my life um how is it is it manifesting in your retirement well i think what is happening is i have this i'm i continually am scheduling scheduling and i'm being efficient with my time and i mean i really do know that some days when i and i get everything i wanted to get done in a certain less than i thought it might take me i mean i get a high over that i just get like i i want to lay down on

1:04:58 the couch and call people and say you can't believe what i accomplished today and i'm thinking oh i i yeah yeah yeah well it's it's only a problem if it's a problem yeah so awareness not to ask it does it does it diminish the quality of your life the moment it begins diminishing the quality of your life meaning a relationship with yourself and other people i think it enriches my relationships with other people because i often choose to do it alone so i don't have to deal with other people being late or not wanting to you'll look at all of that and then and then what came out of this for me

1:05:44 was a an awareness of what balance means now i'm not always in balance it's very elusive for me but i now i i've known what it means now for about 30 years and and if anything that's my chronic target every day is to try to be in balance ever since i could remember as a little girl i was out of control with my food addiction and where you know at 14 it was just so huge that bulimia was my option and and my first drink was my first drunk so i mean like blacked out passed out like you know so so what fellowship are you in

1:06:32 i'm in a number of fellowships herb but your primary one um that's a conundrum for me i'm vacillating between aca with the trauma stuff and um and my food addiction when it comes to substance okay well i mean those are two very major kind of issues and there may they may both be primary yeah and so tell me about one of them in terms of the parallel experience with the allergy and the craving so all right so it's easier to talk about the food because actually yes because you know it's very tangible of you know like i can go

1:07:19 shopping you know i can just walk somewhere and then all of a sudden my mind would see you know but it's there you know in front of me substance and if all of a sudden my mind pays attention to it like longer than three seconds basically where i stare at it it's like i do catch myself today to go whoa what am i gonna bet for you know like that's poison so there's no reason to look at that but um most of the time i i don't find myself looking at it and it's why am i looking at it all of a sudden that's the thing that gets me well then we'll be talking about that more relevantly i believe in the mind problem but let's assume that you're in uh

1:08:06 your food addiction 12-step program because you do lose control do you have a memory of an experience that you can relate to us about intending to have a bite and losing control oh there's so many times we're intending now and losing control and trying to manage it all right so so were you ever able to manage it consistently um the only times that i find that i manage it consistently is when i have boundaries around it and i have the help i need i need attention to to manage it that's my spiritual

1:08:53 solution the language of the heart are there any foods that in fact you find it impossible to manage even with help and boundaries um if you want to call them foods um sure let's just talk about the equivalent of alcohol cheese pizza right so what happens when you have a piece of cheese pizza you're going to have one or two slices of cheese pizza because that's all i need for lunch or for dinner and what happens um they i don't just have one i want more and i want more and i want more and i want more

1:09:39 and i want this and i want that and i want you know and you lose control and it's more than i want it's like i'm doing it without much thought at all or without much awareness or any feeling you know knowing knowing that i knowing that i'm an addict i just and then i suffer from this validity i don't i don't try to fight it i just go with it the only thing i can do is like try to save my life through purging you know because i know it's out of control and i know that i'll overdose yeah yeah yeah i did with alcohol it's so easy for us to slip into the story and the consequences neither of which are relevant it's i wanted to have one or two pieces

1:10:26 of pizza and i was never able to control it what's that i mean you're smart you've got willpower in many other areas of your life why can't you do that in fact you've got willpower to have help and boundaries in other foods but not with that particular one and so and this is not necessarily a question to you it's more of a rhetorical question for you to reflect on your experience this is the example of no choice this is the example of the doctor's opinion that there is a something in your body chemistry that creates a trigger for this particular food that makes it impossible for you to stop once you start

1:11:11 that's what we mean by no choice yeah yeah yeah on the body worksheet um when you first assign it a couple of weeks ago i i did it really quickly i thought oh i know i'm a food addict i don't need any more help with this and i i answered it very quickly and very superficially and last week when you said treat it like an autobiography i sat down with it again and for the first question i may have written three or four pages wow and i wouldn't have thought that i i surprised myself of the the amount that i wrote for each of the questions but especially that first one

1:11:56 yeah i went back to when i was a baby with so glad that you're sharing it the way you're doing it because it will encourage other people to take these directions not as like check boxes but literally to attempt to create an experience for yourself that's what you're talking about right yeah yeah it it uh it deepened yeah um to a level that i wouldn't have i i wasn't even aware of it in in my in my awareness of how far back and how deep it was my experience with this open mind open heart business is it takes me to a place i didn't even know existed yes yes oh thank you yes i have another question

1:12:43 for you i wanted to tell you about that but i um i've i've been in fa for 10 years but for the last three years i've been dealing with relapse off and on and this is the first workshop that i've done with you and i'm doing a lot of different things with you now but this is the first time and from the beginning when we started in january i was able to be abstinent in my program and pardon me what changed um it just everything felt different to me when when we first when we first started from the very beginning the very first day it was something uh it yeah in a different way i hadn't heard before maybe i just hadn't heard it before

1:13:28 it just felt really different i know exactly what you mean yeah and it felt new it felt new kind of like when i first came in program yeah a couple of weeks ago i did break my abstinence and i thought i thought i was spiritually fit what happened what wasn't i paying it was i not paying enough attention was i i i don't know but i just want and and that's the question you want to hold as we're looking through this whole business about next week and the week after about relapse yeah what were you thinking what were you feeling your suspicion and intuition is right on the money something's amiss yeah yeah but you i don't hear you're

1:14:14 beating yourself up over it i hear disappointment but you're actually asking a very mature question so what the hell i i actually saw it as a kind of a test that i snapped back there for a moment but then i i did act on it though i mean i did do it yeah right no no no but all right i'm looking forward to what's coming that's all thank you so much uh questions i just went over those that you know both with alcohol and opiates i used them i love both of them i kept going no matter what even when the consequences were really negative you know when i would nearly lose my life or go to prison are you in the 12-step program now i

1:15:02 have been in since 1975. oh okay and which one is your primary 12-step program uh right now uh the pa pill's anonymous and hey i go to both really all right um and it sounds like you're recently in pills anonymous uh it just recently started in houston but when i went to a.a i was also absent from everything okay and and um so did you have a question for us well um i guess not so much a question i guess we were just going over the things and so i kind of wanted to introduce myself and say um you know i'm going reviewing

1:15:48 the questions and like the other lady just said it's kind of seeing them a little bit differently and um you know more at depth of just the body allergy and so it's been a long time though it's been a lot you've been absent a long time can you remember back when you lost control when you started oh absolutely all right and did you do that more than once many many many times age nine or ten what's your understanding of the problem then that brought you into a 12-step program my inability to control it my allergy my loss of trouble yeah once you start you

1:16:33 cannot stop right and i could not stay stop either because of them you know but i guess well that's a different issue that's yeah yeah i i absolutely had this reaction from once i did it that i wasn't gonna stop till i could not have any other you know have to lock me up tie me down uh something like that yeah and that's just all drama because the the only question that's relevant is what happens reasonably immediately once i take the drink or the pill i want more and i i use more whether i want it or not i don't even think about it yeah yeah because it's not about want

1:17:19 it's about doing yeah i did more i did more that's really the thanksgiving thanks very much i just have two quick questions sure i i've been hearing some terminology tonight i don't really understand all right um alan codependency yes what part what does that mean i'm not sure what you're asking are you asking about alano or codependency well i keep hearing it together um well what do you what is your understanding of codependency what codependency i see as being dependent upon something else well i'm an alcoholic i was dependent on

1:18:04 alcohol that's not codependency okay so what is codependency then well that's a conversation side issue um you could look that up by the way okay my understanding is it's getting my sense of value from what other people think of me and that's it and that's part of a symptomatic of of an al and on but it might only be part of it so yeah and those things you can look up on your own okay um i just had a question i'm kind of as i'm listening to this and going through these questions my main draw here was for alcohol and i'm in a 12-step program for aaa yes and i'm seeing more of a food addict

1:18:50 and so i'm wondering if it even matters if i find the primary right now or if i just keep going forward with alcohol or if that's even if that even matters to this point how long have you been in uh i just got 90 days three days ago i would focus on okay yeah congratulations wonderful you got some traction stay with that one and i do believe it will have what we call a halo effect the work that you do with regard to this workshop in your direct focus on alcohol will have a benefit to you in any other area okay but but focus on the alcohol right now with 90 days you you just got so many

1:19:38 new experiences to have okay and do you have a sponsor i do great and you might talk to the sponsor about that all right okay perfect thank you thanks wonderful question great you have sort of given me new ways to see myself that i have not seen myself before or looked at myself um i have been like 17 years in fruit with food addiction i have um as i said before i i break a lot and that is known as a chronic relapse which i never which i don't like that that term and and also the idea that i that i may be a periodic food addict which scares the hell out of me because um you know last night you said something like when addict is an addict

1:20:24 as an addict you just don't know when you're going to go off yeah um and and that's why i did the 20 questions really carefully i mean instead of the yes no yes no yes no yes yes yes yes yes no no um i actually wrote i wrote a lot about each question and i am a food addict no no question but you said that um that you get a high from eating and i get and through the years part of me like when i break instead of continuing down the rabbit hole and just eating more and condemning myself whatever i i'm able to um i maybe i'm kidding myself i'm able to learn to forgive myself

1:21:10 to and to ask god to forgive myself and ask myself to forgive myself and and like to move on but the question i think is i was trying to think what is my question when i do um eat more than quantities okay and binge foods and that um they hit you talked about a hit and i wonder if my hit is not like the shoulders going down four inches of that i think my hit is the self-loathing and despair that's sort of the i don't know keeps me in a in a place that i'm familiar with it's something i don't know but is it possible to have a a hit or something that is not dopamine whatever that that is just well again you're asking the great questions keep keep with the questions

1:21:57 and see what this process reveals to you the mind work that we will do will be much more interesting and much more subtle and it could it could help with giving you some information and or an experience that will help you answer that question all right okay thanks a lot thank you thank you when i start losing touch or with experiencing the promises um you know that's usually a warning sign that i got to come back to this workshop and i've been doing this every three years and it's about time that i've done it and this time coming back i'm you know the first thing i kind of noticed was that um you know these process addictions uh because i thought

1:22:44 my solution to get back to experience the promises was to come back and do the work as an alcoholic but now i'm wondering you know you know um am i supposed to approach this through the prism of a process addiction specifically am i addicted to anxiety the past six weeks i've been having anxiety attacks just increasingly increasing and everything i try to do to alleviate them in in kind of a physiological sense is not working so when i you know the couple times i've come back to the workshop i'm noticing that you know anxiety can also be an addiction or is that a symptom of untreated dry alcoholism well see it's wonderful that and i'm i'm

1:23:31 sort of repeating myself a lot tonight that you have the question and there's no downside to exactly the juxtaposition of questions that you just ask is it something on its own that's beginning to go like crab grass or is it in fact that i haven't dealt or continued to deal or foster my original issue and and in terms of my unmanageability spiritual melody just hold those questions continue doing this work in step one that we'll do and i'm i'm confident at the end of the step one work you will have a conclusion that will be very satisfactory i went through the 20-question questionnaire

1:24:16 with the head of an alcoholic very easy to answer yeah and then i said hey am i an anxiety addict and i started answering them and of course the the answers came out different um and hence the question i asked was how am i supposed to or what prism and i hear what you're saying is just stick with it but do i use a prism in order to no approach the prism of set-aside prayers what i would be suggesting and as i recall and you i think your nomenclature there on the picture says that you're now in hawaii you've made a very very huge life change maybe it's a situational anxiety so just keep in mind that you know we're human beings and lots of parts of maybe misfiring right

1:25:03 now they are yeah yeah great to have you with us again good please join me in the serenity prayer we'll bring it to conclusion please join me god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference