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0:00:15 John: Hello and welcome to AA Beyond Belief, the podcast. I'm your host, John S. Today, Benn and I will be discussing Step 10, "Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it."

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0:00:34 John: Hello, Benn. Are you ready for Step 10 today?

0:00:38 Benn: Yeah, I sure am, John. Looking forward to it.

0:00:40 John: Okay. It's kind of funny. I know what the step says, but I feel like I always have to read it nowadays, 'cause I don't go to meetings where they read the steps at the beginning of every meeting anymore. So I don't have them quite committed to my brain cells like I used to, I guess.

0:00:55 Benn: Yeah.

0:00:55 John: But this one says, "Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it." I guess I'll just start a little bit on the conversation, as I always felt like this is a step that really kinda worked its way into my life where I really feel like it's something that I do on a very regular basis. I do not actually take a written inventory, the end of every day. I might not even be consciously aware that I'm thinking about it, but it's just become such a natural part of how I behave now, that I guess, I just have a conscience and I'm very aware of my interactions with other people and it's no problem for me to look at where I was wrong and try to set things straight.

0:01:50 John: I mean almost it's like I have to do it anymore. It's just a part of my nature now to do that. And I don't think that it comes natural to me to do that. I think it's something that I learn in AA, not necessarily, partly by reading the books but everything in AA. Just the experience of talking to people, going to meetings, everything has kind of taught me to do that. But there's a lot of good stuff in here and it's also interesting to note again that, I read the 12 and 12 when I read the Big Book and, again, the Big Book was all religious. The Big Book, the more I read it, the more it sounds like a Bible, whereas the 12 and 12 was not so much into the God thing. To me, I thought the 12 and 12 seemed pretty rational.

0:02:34 Benn: Yeah.

0:02:35 John: Yeah. What are your thoughts about this?

0:02:37 Benn: Well, when I talk about this step in meetings quite often, I'll talk about, "This is the step that keeps me coming back to AA." I know we've talked about it on the podcast before and I heard you talk to Jeb about it. The steps, on some level, kind of happened to me as I stayed in meetings and I did the things that AA kind of asked us to do, before I ever attended AA, but the problem was, that I would quit doing them. So, I guess Step 10 on some level is... Being in AA and Step 10 tells me I need to keep doing that stuff. I had that all­or­nothing thinking, where it was like, "Once I learn this stuff, once I clean some stuff up, then I should be good to go." and this says, "No, you've gotta stay in this process and keep doing it."

0:03:22 Benn: And that's of great benefit. I'm kinda like you but I'm kinda not in that I think I did this kind of stuff even when I drank. I'm sure you probably did too, like think about all the remorse and feeling bad the next day and all that stuff. I was constantly taking my inventory, but then avoiding doing anything about it, or I did. I apologized to a lot of people before I ever went to AA, too. I was practically a professional apologizer, but being in AA and this process of self­reflection in the Steps, helped me kind of reform that from a blame­and­shame to just taking a good hard look at it and resolving some of it and finding that middle ground between letting myself off the hook and beating the crap out of myself.

0:04:10 John: Right.

0:04:11 Benn: Yeah.

0:04:11 John: Right. Well, some things that I got from AA, and it comes out of the 12 and 12, and I'm not looking at it right now, but there's a line in there that says, "When we're disturbed, there's something wrong with us." Now a lot of people that... I've been in meetings a lot of times when this has come up, and a lot of people take offense to that. For some reason, they hear it thinking that there's something defective about me or I'm wrong in every instance. Anytime I have a conflict with another person, I am wrong. I don't see it that way. The way that I see it is that if I'm disturbed, if I'm bothered, there's something I need to pay attention to. That's how I'm viewing it. There's something wrong. There's something I need to take care of. It doesn't mean I'm wrong. In fact, I might be right. I might be in an argument or a dispute with someone and be absolutely right but emotionally, I'm torn up about it and I think that that's what's it's talking about, is there's something about my emotional state that needs to be looked at. There's something wrong there.

0:05:23 John: So, I kinda operate that way now, where I'm very much in tune with my emotional state. It doesn't mean I correct it right away. Sometimes, I go way... That's another thing it talked about in this book. It talked about self­restraint, which I'm terrible at, and I need to work on that. But I do always, I'm very aware of that, of where I am emotionally and I do stop and try to figure out, "What the hell is going on with me? Who do I need to have a conversation with?" And that kind of thing. So, that was a big part of the program for me.

0:06:02 Benn: Yeah. And again, I think this is about empowerment, that part of it. I wish it was worded differently, but I agree with you that when this gets talked about in meetings and from the very early going, I was able to kind of translate that, I guess. But if you don't mind, I'll just read that little paragraph quick. "It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us." Again, I wish it was worded differently, because I can think... And I've had this tendency, especially when I was early on was sponsoring people. It's like I was so quick to get everybody into, "Well, what's wrong with you that this is bothering you so much?" Whereas I think, or what I learned from counseling and active listening, was that there needs to be a period of time where you listen to somebody talk about the issue and let them vent and talk about what they need to talk about about it.

0:07:00 Benn: And then you can get to the point where you break it down and say, "Well, what's really going on here? What's all going on?" Kind of like you worded it. Whereas I think sometimes in AA, we get so quick to avoid giving somebody rationalization, justification for how they feel, and we jump immediately right on, "Well, what's the matter with you that this is going this way?" Whereas if we can do that a little bit different way, it is about empowering us. 'Cause then it goes on to say, "If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also." Again, I wish that was worded differently, but the point is... 0:07:31 John: Yeah, 'cause not necessarily are we always in the wrong.

0:07:34 Benn: Right. But I think what it's asking us to or what I think about therapeutically that goes on, it's asking us, "Why did you give up your power? Why is this something that is bothering you so much?" Why different parts of year two talks about stopping fighting anything and everything. And it's about why... You need to look at why these things bother you so deeply or this issue bothers you so deeply. And I think if you dig into that, you can... It's almost like fourth and fifth step, where you can really see what's going on. I mean, if somebody walks up and punches you in the face, you're probably gonna feel a little angry. But then it goes on. "But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about, "justifiable" anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self­righteous folk? For us of AA, these are... "

0:08:25 John: Self­righteous folk.

0:08:28 Benn: "For us of AA, these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it." Okay, I can get behind this maybe in early sobriety or early recovery that it's best to maybe just not go there, but on some level, when I read this paragraph, it is avoidance. It is like whatever you do, don't you dare feel angry. And I think in my mind, when you get to a really good place in recovery and it's really working and it's flowing, you get to where you can acknowledge your anger.

0:09:04 Benn: And for me, I don't have to bottle things up now until I become so mad that I say something over something that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. It's I can resolve my anger. I can tell someone I'm angry at what they did and not do it in an angry tone. Like I think in Al­Anon they say, "Say what you mean but don't say it mean." My reaction to expressing anger doesn't always have to be a stereotypical way of what we talked about anger. We've got a little girl now and there's gonna be times where she angers me when she gets older.

0:09:38 Benn: And I don't have to yell at her. I can say, "Hazel, what you did made me... I felt angry when you intentionally did something that you knew I didn't want you to do." So I don't have to go, "What the fuck are you doing?" I mean, it's about learning how to handle anger in a healthy manner. And I think it starts... You talked about this. It starts with being able to acknowledge it and realize that you're feeling it on some level. And that anger isn't necessarily a bad emotion. I don't wanna feel it all the time, but if I deny it and I stuff it, it is gonna come out somewhere or some way. So I can agree with this paragraph, especially in early recovery but I don't think we can keep doing that throughout our recovery.

0:10:19 John: Maybe it's healthy just to recognize when we're angry like a barometer that, "Okay, wow! Something's going on with me here," 'cause before I was ever involved in AA, I think I always had a bad, bad temper when I was a kid. I was very impatient, losing my temper. And it was just always that way. But I never really stopped to examine that. I never really tried to understand what was going on and it really wasn't until I was in AA.

0:10:54 John: But in AA, there's always this analogy of it being an illness. So every time, no matter what's going on with us when we're talking about recovery in AA through our literature, we always refer to it as some sort of an illness where there is something wrong with us. There's something that needs to be treated. So it's like anger is just another one of these... They referred to it as almost like an illness. It's like something is killing us. Not necessarily so, though. I think anger is just, we wouldn't be human. You got things make us angry and sometimes maybe we need to feel that anger for whatever reason. But like everything, it just needs to be in its proper context and understood for what it is, I guess. And you don't wanna lash out at other people and be crazy. But...

0:11:47 Benn: Well, it's like this social justice movement or Black Lives Matter or things like that, it's like, "How do we handle our anger and how do we move forward," and not to turn this into a politics show, but a lot of great changes in society have happened because somebody got so pissed off they couldn't take it anymore. And how they did that depended on how successful they were lots of times. So to me, anger is not a bad thing, like you were saying, it's something to be checked out and looked at and utilized properly, and when you find out what's really underneath it, you take the action. It's just a feeling, it's like any feeling.

0:12:29 John: Yeah. Some day when we write new recovery literature in AA, I think that we should have a version that leaves out all the spiritual stuff and references to it being all the spiritual stuff that's in here. Having spiritual advisors and having a spiritual sickness and blah blah blah. Spiritual axioms and... Yeah, you don't really need all that. Can't we just call it what it actually is and not use all that language?

0:12:56 Benn: All the woo woo?

0:12:57 John: Yeah.

0:12:57 Benn: We have entered the world of the spirit.

0:13:00 John: Sometimes I like it, but sometimes it's just too much and especially I think if... Well, when I was talking to Jeb in our conversation last week, I told him, I said that I liked spirituality when it's presented in literature or if it's presented in writing because it's just a way of communication, it's a language that we use with each other. But then he said, "Yes, but you have to be taught that language." And he got me thinking, he says, "Yeah, you're right." And that's the whole problem with it in AA is you have to be taught the language. So when we're sitting in AA meetings and we're talking the spiritual language of AA, the newcomer doesn't understand it right off the bat. I remember being frustrated with it myself, so in that sense why do we even bother with that language that people have to learn it, when you could just go ahead and talk plainly?

0:13:52 Benn: Yeah, that's one of my frustrations, I think, with AA. It's like we wanna make sure we're always paying tribute to this book and the language they use, but really if we're really wanting to reach people, talk about our experience and translate it so that newcomers can understand it too, 'cause it's... Otherwise it feels like a club that you have to get in...

0:14:13 John: Yeah.

0:14:14 Benn: And become a part of.

0:14:15 John: You do have to learn the lingo, you have to learn the language and it's not necessary. But I know why it happened, because these books are written by the founders, who are very gone and dead now and they would be in their hundreds right now. So these are very old books and of course they had religious experiences, these are people who really firmly believed that there was an intervening God who was responsible for their sobriety. 0:14:50 Benn: But not all of them.

0:14:51 John: No, I guess not all of them, you're right about that.

0:14:52 Benn: Two or three of them didn't.

0:14:53 John: You're right, you're right about that.

0:14:54 Benn: We don't hear about that.

0:14:55 John: That's true. But I guess you're right, though. But I guess the ones that got away with the writing, but they really believed that. So anyway, all of their language is like that, but that's what's so weird about AA. We've evolved from that. I don't believe that people, maybe they do believe it, I don't know, it's hard for me. As an atheist, it's hard for me to believe that people really believe that there's actually a God that does all of this. But I guess they do. They really believe that?

0:15:22 Benn: Yeah, I think it makes people...

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0:15:24 Benn: It makes people feel better. And the thing that scares me about it is drinking made me feel better too. It didn't mean it was a good solution, right? So just because something makes you feel better, doesn't make it a good thing or true, but again, that's everybody's right, for sure. But things like you've said, where it talks about, "Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear".

0:15:46 John: Yeah, that's good.

0:15:47 Benn: Now, I think that's good but then it says, "When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them."

0:15:52 John: Yeah, you don't necessarily have to do that.

0:15:54 Benn: Yeah, but I suppose for some people just asking to have it removed helps them let that stuff go.

0:16:02 John: And another way you could do it, I guess, when you're selfish, angry, afraid, whatever, instead of asking God to remove it, you could just be quiet and reflect, or you could just meditate, or whatever, I guess, there's other different things you can do. And maybe if it works, it's because that's what the people are actually doing when they're asking God to remove it, what they're really doing... Okay, maybe they are actually asking a deity to do this, but they're also thinking, reflecting, getting quiet, centering themselves, and they're doing all of those things. So that's what's probably really doing it, I don't know.

0:16:43 Benn: Yeah, that same part of the brain gets activated that comes with serenity and peace and meditation and the end of yoga, it's all that same area.

0:16:53 John: But you know, Benn, there was a time I actually did all of that. I actually did ask God to remove things from me, I did do that. My sponsor told me, "Ask God, just go home and ask God to do it," and I did. I really would, I'd go home and I'd get on my knees and I'd do all that kind of stuff. That's so weird I did that, I really did that kind of stuff. I don't know what I was doing, Benn, but I guess it was keeping me sober. Wow! This is really bizarre that I got away from all of that. I don't think I ever really believed in a real God, but I never really questioned it either.

0:17:29 Benn: Well, you put your trust in everybody and did what they told you to.

0:17:32 John: Yeah.

0:17:32 Benn: Yeah.

0:17:33 John: I tell you, I still struggle sometimes, I think, with being an atheist. I'm comfortable being an atheist, but I think every once in a while, when I really stop and think about before I realized I was an atheist, that it really is weird to me that I either believed or said or did things for so many years that seem so bizarre to me now. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of a strange thing.

0:18:02 Benn: Yeah. Oh, I can remember I had my big born again period of time and I was on my knees praying about stuff all the time, and that stuff did make me feel better for a while. I got to be a self­righteous asshole too, but that doesn't mean that everybody who believes in God does, but...

0:18:21 John: I never asked you. How did you ever get to go from being a believer to an atheist?

0:18:27 Benn: It was kind of like recovery for me. It wasn't a moment where I was just like, "I don't believe this shit anymore". It was just kind of a slow question of it. I think when I first, I suppose it was, became a born­again Christian, I was so depressed that I just wanted some relief and I was drinking a lot, obviously. And that was a big thing for me. It really did make me feel better for quite a while. It wasn't a white light experience, but I definitely, it helped me a great deal, I thought at that time, but I kinda have a different perspective on why I did that then, but when you're in such a dark place, any little crack of light seems so bright, it's easy to make such a deal of it.

0:19:12 Benn: I was ready to go to Duke University to go to Divinity School. I had applied and all that stuff and thought I was gonna be a pastor, and of course, I was still drinking off and on. It was never really a moment where I'm like, "I don't believe this shit". And it actually, it started when I was researching it more and more and reading more about the history of the books and how they found the different gospels and the ones that got left out...

0:19:36 John: In the history of the Bible, you mean?

0:19:37 Benn: Yeah.

0:19:38 John: Yeah, that's very interesting stuff.

0:19:39 Benn: Yeah, and the more I learned about it, the less I believed, and then after a while it was just like, I became more interested in this kind of therapeutic­type stuff and psychology and it's just I understood more why people believed in how these stories came about and what they were like. But I know what you mean, there are times where I'm just like, sometimes people pull out that argument, "Well, how did all this started?" And sometimes my whole brain is like, "Yeah, I don't exactly know. Big Bang, we'll start at the Big Bang." I don't know, but I know I don't believe in some magic sky god making all this whatever, and I certainly don't believe that it matters whether I believe that or not.

0:20:20 Benn: I think it's good to have hope. I think it's good to... I know a lot of people in this WAAFT­ish type movement don't like anything that has to do with woo or living in the mystery. But when I say living in the mystery, it's like I want to be skeptical. I want to continue to search, and like you said, it's the seeking where we find. I don't need shortcuts anymore to make me feel better about something, just make something.

0:20:44 John: One thing, I was thinking about that, too. You just talked about how people in WAAFT might not like different things, but what I really like about the agnostic movement within AA is the diversity of experience. It's crazy. Now, we're all over the map. There are people that we'll see in Austin who want absolutely nothing to do with the Steps. They think the Steps are just bullshit. They don't need 'em. They don't like anything to do with all the traditional AA. Then you have other people who are just very, very into the actual Big Book, and they believe the Big Book should be read and studied and followed and precisely. You got people even in our agnostic movement who've had the back­to­basics experience and believe in that process. It runs the gamut. If there's anything that we have in common, it's probably that everybody has the freedom to express their own individual path and we don't pray, we're more secular in that way, but everybody is totally free to reject or to accept their path.

0:21:58 Benn: And I hope I'm not just saying this because I'm being grandiose about this whole idea behind WAAFT, but it just felt like everybody was more respectful of everybody's right to have their own opinion about it.

0:22:08 John: That's right.

0:22:09 Benn: And there was plenty of debating. Some people got heated that first day about the whole idea of spirituality, but it felt like people took it less personal, and it feels like what I would hope AA was in the early going or at its best point, but now it feels like if you bring up anything that even goes slightly against anything in the book or any of our sacred texts, it's like, "Wow! You're not a member," or, "You really must have not read it right," or I don't know, I just would like to think that it's what AA could and should be. Again, this isn't perfect either but it's just respecting everybody's right.

0:22:49 John: If you took the religiosity out of traditional AA and the worshipping of the books, that's the biggest thing about the traditional AA'ers. The uniformity of the people's experience is to line up with the book. And everybody wants their experience to line up like that; whereas in our agnostic movement, we don't care if we line up with each other's experience. That's a huge, huge difference, I think, between the two. And I think that AA would be better off if it was more like the agnostic groups where people were more tolerant of other people's experience and embrace that diversity of experience. We still have that common bond as alcoholics who believe that by gathering together and supporting each other that we help each other stay sober. We have that bond, but anyway.

0:23:45 Benn: We unify over that. That's what I think. We talk about unity in AA and it's unity. It is not uniformity. AA could be a wonderful diverse place where and should be, I think, and is meant to be, but the way it is, it's very much like religion. It's like when you talk to these people who are fundamental about the book, you bring up something in the book that contradicts the book and they get angry about it. But it's like you said, when you're coming from a secular agnostic perspective, some of it I think's great and other parts of it I don't think are that great.

0:24:17 Benn: So I don't have to rationalize and justify the parts that aren't so great. It makes me appreciate it more, actually. Like you don't have to play mental gymnastics and say, "Yeah. Well, you know the stuff that was written in the Old Testament was just there as law because Jesus was coming to bring the law to our hearts." When you get talking to dogmatists that way in AA about that too, it's like... 'cause I'll bring up, "Well, what about on page 164?" It's kind of the postscript to all of it that says, "We realize we only know a little. This is all just suggested." "Well, they didn't really mean that." But, I don't know.

0:24:56 John: Well, Mark C, when I was talking to him, he was interesting, because he has that history of studying the Bible and everything. So he draws parallels between the Big Book and the Bible and how the Big Book is revered in AA and how the Bible is revered by evangelicals. And that he respects both books, and he knows both books, but if you know the books as literature and the background and study it in the context of its time and take out of it, and not just worship it, I think you can get something more out of them than if you just kind of try to make up excuses for the contradictions, and so forth. I mean, it's kinda silly.

0:25:40 Benn: Yeah, for sure. But I don't know. I was reading here too in the Big Book about, "We will see that our new attitude towards liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes!" It's just like, yeah. As your brain gets away from alcohol for a while, you're gonna have less craving but it's...

0:26:01 John: That's what I was gonna say. There's gotta be a psychologic... There's got to be a physiological reason, psychological reason for that. I know the same thing is true with smoking. When you stop smoking, at first, it's like all you can think about. At first all you can think about is, "I wanna smoke," and then all of a sudden you think about you're not smoking all the time. Same thing with drinking. You're thinking about, "I wanna drink," then you're thinking, "I'm not drinking. I'm not drinking," all the time. And then over a period of time, suddenly, your brain is no longer thinking that you want to drink or you're not drinking. The addiction, for whatever reason, is out of your brain on a daily basis.

0:26:39 Benn: Your body is basically re­accommodating to the fact that you're not going to be giving it alcohol on a consistent basis and it's readjusting.

0:26:46 John: And it seems miraculous. It seems like, "Wow! I didn't do a damn thing. God must've just taken it all away from me!" but really what happened is just like time kinda heals all things, maybe. [laughter]

0:26:58 Benn: Yeah, and these things feel like miracle to us going through it because this is a... If we're gonna say it's a disease. Well, it's a disease of delusion and perception. We hear that in meetings and I can agree with that. It is our perception screwed up when our brain's physically addicted. So it feels like a miracle, but because it feels like a miracle, it doesn't make it a miracle. And if it is, if AA is so successful at sobering up so many people, it doesn't really meet the definition of a miracle. So either we're really great at getting people sober in AA or... You know what I mean? Like, if something happens all the time, it is not a miracle. [laughter] It defeats the definition of it. So it's a... I don't know. My concern is this magical thinking and then it also makes it sound like that is a miracle of it. We're not fighting it. We feel as though we have been placed in a position of neutrality.

0:27:52 Benn: We've not sworn it off. Instead, the problem has been removed. Well, guess what? I'm sober almost 10 years now, but every once in a while, that crazy thought will pop into my brain. And the way these texts talk about it and make it sound like it will be removed and you won't feel that way again. That's not always true. There's like an echo effect in our brain, where it just pops in there once in a while, and I think it is important that we don't shame the hell out of ourselves about that, because that's our brain. It's just a fragment of what's left behind.

0:28:25 John: I actually went through a time where I would be afraid at meetings to say that I was thinking about drinking, because I would think that people would think that I wasn't working on a program or I was... That they'd put some kind of judgement on me. But there's nothing wrong with that. I still, after 28 years of sobriety, there have been times when I have wanted to drink. No, I wouldn't say that it gripped me to the point where it was an obsession, but I've come pretty damn close to being obsessed about it. I've taken the action of talking to people about what I'm thinking and feeling to help me get through it. But yeah, I've had some close calls, especially my first two years of sobriety but... Yeah.

0:29:12 Benn: I can remember being, probably, about three years sober and a friend and I went out and visited a friend in Chicago and we went out to eat. And this would not have been my MO before at all when I went to Chicago. We went out to eat and they were sharing a bottle of wine and I don't even really drink wine and couldn't have cared less. But there was something about that night being at this very small restaurant, that was not a party scene, so it wasn't even really a trigger, and I did not necessarily want to drink, but I felt so uncomfortable and so out of place, and I just told my friend. I go, "Can I have the keys back to your apartment? I think I'm just gonna go home and stay and you guys stay out tonight. No big deal." And she said, "Yeah, no problem." And I just felt so awkward and I just... I had to get out of there and doing what I've learned, I don't need to stay somewhere I'm uncomfortable, but it wasn't that I wanted to drink but for some... I mean, I'm sure it had something to do with that, but I just felt so uncomfortable.

0:30:02 John: Yeah.

0:30:03 Benn: And I don't have so many of those days anymore if I end up at a bar for a concert or something, or something. It doesn't even really pop into my mind, but in the earlier years, that would happen.

0:30:13 John: Yeah. Usually I'm pretty safe. I'll tell you the story of my close relapse, and I hope I haven't ever told this on the podcast before, 'cause I hate to keep saying the same stories over and over. What happened is I was sober for two years and for whatever damn reason, I got into my head the vision of a bottle of apricot brandy. I think I was at a gas station where there was a bottle of apricot brandy back behind the counter. And goddamn, I couldn't get it out of my mind, all I could think about was that bottle of apricot brandy and I wouldn't tell anybody. And I started thinking, I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna go buy a bottle." This is crazy, apricot brandy 'cause I think the only time I ever drank it I was in high school. But anyway, and it's not really that great, but that's what I was wanting. But I thought, "Okay, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna buy a bottle of apricot brandy and I'm gonna take it home and I'm gonna put it my coat pocket in my closet, so it will be there just in case I need it", was what I was telling myself. All this shit's going on in my brain, I'm not telling anybody about it. 0:31:20 John: This is going on for weeks! This is crazy crap. Well, anyway, finally, one day, I walk into a liquor store, ready to buy a bottle of apricot brandy. And goddamn, it was like I just had to go do it. So I was in that goddamn liquor store and I started getting really, really nervous and scared. I looked around and I saw all these bottles glistening and everything, I just felt like, "Oh, my God!" I just really felt scared. So I went home and then I got on the phone and I called my sponsor at the time and I told him what I just did. And I talked to him and then, wouldn't you know it, that whole obsession was gone, just by simply talking to someone about it. But that was the closest I ever came to a relapse.

0:32:10 John: The second time, though, was after being sober maybe 25 years or whatever, it was a couple of years ago. And what happened was, I realized I was an atheist and I started questioning everything. Everything! All my ideas were on the table. And I was researching different treatments for alcoholism and I ran across the Sinclair Method on the internet and I was intrigued about the possibility that there was a pill out there, that I could take and enjoy all this great beer that we have in Kansas City.

0:32:47 John: It's everywhere, Benn, we got crazy beer joints everywhere. Well, I couldn't get it out of my mind. I was really getting to be obsessed about this whole thing of wanting to drink this beer. So finally, same thing. I told somebody what was going on in my brain and it kind of worked its way out. But those were the two closest times where... I've had many times where there's been passing thoughts, but those were the times where they were really obsessions, where that was kind of dangerous for me. But they happen, and it's nothing to put a judgment on. It doesn't mean that you're good or bad or you're working a good program or you're not working a good program. These things will... If you're an alcoholic, unfortunately, that's what we do.

0:33:30 Benn: Yeah. Well, you're the second person that's told me about that, with the naltrexone and...

0:33:38 John: Wanting to drink on it? Wanting to do it?

0:33:39 Benn: Yeah. And the other person I just told, "Do you wanna be a sober person?" They're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Are you happy being a sober person?" "Yeah." And then so I was like, "Well, why do you wanna toy with this and fuck around with that, then?" And it was like, "Oh, yeah, you're right." And maybe the Sinclair Method's only good for that very small percentage of the population that's very chronically addicted but does wanna stay sober, but it's like, it's nothing to mess with if you wanna be sober.

0:34:07 John: And you know what's really weird about it anyway, a lot of the people that do do the Sinclair Method end up going entirely abstinent anyway, because, for whatever reason, you're not getting from alcohol what we like to get from alcohol when you're taking that stuff.

0:34:20 Benn: Right. Yeah, that's the problem, you won't get drunk.

0:34:21 John: So, probably what I would wanna do, I probably would not wanna take it.

[laughter]

0:34:25 Benn: Yeah, or you should just quit taking the pill. Yeah, that's the danger so it's nothing to mess around with. But if somebody was really chronically addicted, I can see it being a good option. And that's why I think it's important to talk about this stuff and I'll bring it up in a meeting about having a craving, even as having some years under my belt, because sitting alone with that thought is the danger.

0:34:48 John: It is.

0:34:48 Benn: There's nothing wrong with having a thought, it's what you do, it's like it's nothing wrong with having an ill thought of someone, but it's what you do with that thought too. And to me, that's the whole idea behind AA. If you sit alone with something, like I did for years thinking I had a drinking problem, and that I was the only idiot who couldn't control it, you beat yourself up. You feel shitty. But if you go and you just talk to somebody else and they say, "Yeah, I felt that way, too," you're like, "Oh, I'm not crazy." Yeah, really, that's AA in a nutshell, right?

0:35:16 John: It is.

0:35:16 Benn: We talk to each other and it's like, "Oh, I've felt that. I've felt that." And then it feels better. That's why it's like, we gotta take the shame away from that. And it's, again, that is why I feel okay bashing and beating some of this stuff that I read in the book because it makes it sound magical and it makes it sound like, "You will never think that way again as long as you keep your spiritual condition fit," and this and that. And I agree with...

0:35:38 John: But that's where you put judgment on it. That's the problem. As long as you're in fit spiritual condition. So here's the thing, someone says, "I've been treated like this before, Benn, I have in the meetings: 'Oh, John, did you pray today? Did you pray? Well, that's why, you didn't pray. I've never known anybody who went out and got drunk, who prayed,'" and shit like that, and it's like they put some kind of judgment where it's your fault because you weren't doing the program right, you're not close enough to God, you're not in fit spiritual condition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

0:36:05 Benn: And again, all that stuff is okay stuff to check out, but when it becomes, "Oh, well, you would not feel that way or you would not think that way if you were doing everything right," then it just becomes this perpetual self­blame and it's like, "Oh, yeah, I forgot, I'm the fuck­up, everybody else has life figured out and I don't." I wanna segue that into this one portion of the step 10 and the 12 by 12 because I think this is part of our delusion as well.

0:36:32 Benn: Second paragraph it says, "The continuous look at our assets and our liabilities and a real desire to learn and grow by this means are necessities for us." Okay, agree with that. "We alcoholics have learned this the hard way." Now this, "More experienced people, of course, in all times and places, have practised unsparing self­survey and criticism." So again, it's kind of idolizing other people who do this better than we do, like we're the fuck­ups.

0:37:00 John: Yeah, what does it say there? Read that again. "Other people... "

0:37:02 Benn: "More experienced people, of course, in all times and places, have practised unsparing self­survey and criticism." So it's like saying, "There's these people who do this kind of perfectly".

0:37:12 John: I got it, though. 0:37:14 Benn: "For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self­ searching becomes a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong." Okay, I can agree with that last part of it, but the part where it makes it sound like there are these people who are so well­versed. And we hear this when people talk about normies too, like they don't have this problem, they don't have that kind of thinking. I think they do, it's just not necessarily about alcohol.

0:37:44 Benn: Again, that goes along with that tone and why I want to say that is because there's this tone of perpetually beating yourself up. And it's always, "Well, I guess I just let up on the spiritual part of this program." And then some asshole in the meeting will say, "There's not a spiritual part of the program, it's a spiritual program. The whole thing's spiritual." And it is set up... And okay, the good part of it is, it is always important to take a look at ourselves, I agree with that, and we gotta watch out for rationalization, justification. But it feels like a set­up to perpetually always blame and shame yourself for being a broken person. "Obviously, if that didn't go right, it's because you didn't do something right." Or, "Maybe we need to go backwards, you need to redo your fourth step or you wouldn't be feeling self­pity right now."

0:38:32 Benn: Or the tone of what it says in here too about, "If you've really resolved your past it won't be haunting you anymore." I think that's bullshit. There are degrees of your past haunting you. It's not about getting it perfect and having it forever be done, it's about putting in a different perspective, I think. And again, the reason it angers me is because we don't need to set ourselves up to always be wrong. A more honest way would be to say, sometimes your past isn't quite done with you. There are some things left to resolve that are gonna come up that you think you maybe have dealt with. And it's maybe gonna happen, be prepared for it. But instead, our literature sometimes carries this tone that once you do this, you won't feel this way. Or once you're half way through the ninth step, these promises will happen, oh, but if you work for them. My fear is I just don't like how it always sets you up to be able to blame yourself. Now again, it's always good to be able to go back and take a look like, "Okay, could I have done something different in that situation?"

0:39:34 Benn: That's good. But to go back and be like, "Whoa, shit. What did I fuck up? I gotta go look through all this shit and I'm not working the program right. And I wouldn't have that thought of drinking if I was close to God in the right way." These aren't tasks to fulfill. It's a process to get involved in, I think. Sorry, I kinda ranted there.

0:39:54 John: No, no, that's good stuff. What I like to think about, like when I'm doing step 10, I don't really think that alcoholics are really that different from any other human being in the world, I really don't. I think that we all have selfishness, self­centeredness, anger problems and resentment problems. And maybe it's for us... I kind of do buy into that, "I did drink because I liked to change the way I felt." And if I do carry around a lot of resentment and anger, I have an emotional state that I might like to change, and one good way of changing that is to drink. So there might be a good reason for us to have a tool where we can put these kinds of emotions in check. But that's the only difference. Everybody has these things. And maybe some people even go through this process without even really realizing that and if they're decent people they admit when they're wrong and so forth.

0:41:01 Benn: One thing about that, that always bugged me, is like say alcoholics drink because they like the effect. Well, everybody likes the effect or else they wouldn't drink alcohol, period, even if you're somebody who drinks one or two beers, you'd just have tap water. 0:41:13 John: That's true. You do drink for the effect.

0:41:15 Benn: Yeah. But the point is, I think on some level, developing a substance abuse problem or alcohol problem or becoming an alcoholic, however you wanna say it, it's about emotional regulation. And I think whether you believe in the disease concept or you're born with a predisposition, or whatever, but if we don't have good role models in our life that teach us how to cope and how to self­soothe in healthy ways and how to get through things emotionally, and some of that includes how we teach our kids to process their feelings, work through their feelings, acknowledge their feelings. If we don't have that, I think then subconsciously our drinking is a way to resolve those feelings and not deal with the. And we hear at meetings all the time, you walk in, you're... I don't like it sometimes when I hear it, but it's symbolically it's fairly true. "I started drinking when I was 15, so emotionally I'm kind of a 15­year­old." Well, the point is that we never really had to go through anything and work through anything and go through the pain of it and get to the other side of it.

0:42:17 John: Right.

0:42:18 Benn: And see that we could make it though. Because for many of us, any time that we felt some discomfort, we drank, whether it was before we were addicted or whatever you wanna say, but we drank and never really had to cope and learn that it could be okay on the other side of it without working our way through it with alcohol.

0:42:34 John: We drank for the effect, like other people drink for the effect, but is the difference that we depended on it to get through life? Is that the difference? And until where it just kinda became the obsession and compulsion and physical addiction, eventually.

0:42:51 Benn: Yeah, and I can get behind that if somebody said we drank for the effect of soothing our emotions. Most people aren't drinking just to get through something or just to feel different or just to cope with being in a room with other people.

0:43:04 John: Right.

0:43:05 Benn: Yes, I agree with that.

0:43:07 John: Yeah, I just remember when I was... My first six months of sobriety, I was forced to go to this community addictions program. It was part of my probation, and I will never forget the counselor, when I met with him, he said, "Yeah you've got a serious alcohol dependency," I think he said. That sounded so weird when I heard that. I said, "Wow! Wow, I'm really dependent upon alcohol." The more I thought about it, I said, "Yeah. I guess I really was. I did depend on it for a lot of things."

0:43:39 Benn: I always kinda had my little tests when people were kinda fighting things when they'd come into my office and, "I don't know if I have a problem or not." And I would just say, "Well, does it scare you to think about not drinking?" "Oh, yeah." "Well, you maybe have something that you have to take a look at, then." If somebody told me I couldn't have steak the rest of my life, I'd probably be like, "Oh crap, I really like a good rib­eye medium rare, but I suppose I can give it up." 0:44:06 John: Yeah.

0:44:06 Benn: But at that time when I was still drinking if you said, "Oh, you can't drink."

0:44:10 John: It's hard to imagine.

0:44:11 Benn: Yeah, it created fear in me. It's like, "Oh, shit. What the hell?"

0:44:13 John: It does. I remember that, that was a frightening prospect, "What? Never drink again? How am I gonna do that?" I just didn't quite get it but I knew I had to. Because it was absolutely insane what happened to my life through drinking. As I know yours was too.

0:44:31 Benn: Oh, yeah.

0:44:31 John: But still there's a part of me and probably there still is, I wish I could drink but I would want to drink a lot, probably.

[chuckle]

0:44:44 Benn: Well, yeah. I kinda proved it to myself, too, because when I would try not drink so much during different periods of my life. I would go out with people and if it wasn't gonna be a night where everybody stayed out I just wouldn't drink. I knew I didn't wanna just have a couple... I didn't wanna have a couple. I'd be like, "Oh, I'm not gonna drink tonight then if we're not staying out."

0:45:06 John: Right.

0:45:06 Benn: So to me that says I had a problem too. I didn't wanna have a couple, I wanna have a bunch.

0:45:11 John: So step 10 is a maintenance step. We're supposed to be maintaining our sobriety by, for me it's just all about checking our emotional state, checking our motives, keeping our relationships in order, admitting when we're wrong, making amends. It talks about doing a spot check inventory. I don't think you have to actually get pen and paper out, I think that you can just kinda sit down and just kinda mull over in your brain what happened in a day. Most of my issues, but not all of them, are work­related, where I have problems with people at work. But not always, sometimes it could be just people, it could be anything. Sometimes little things within the AA or my friends or family and different things like that. But...

0:46:01 Benn: Yeah. I think it's good. It's like do everything you've been doing up until now and keep doing it.

0:46:09 John: Yeah.

0:46:10 Benn: And steps one through nine and it is good. It's good to... To be honest, I've never sat down and taken a paper and pen at the end of the day. It's like...

0:46:17 John: I don't think anybody does. Anyway, it does say in here that, it says many of us do, anyway. It doesn't say we all do. Doesn't mean you have to. 0:46:25 Benn: Right.

0:46:25 John: I kinda misunderstood that, 'cause I used to say in meetings sometimes, I'd say, "I think this is the one step that hardly anybody actually really does." Because I thought that to really do it, you had to really at the end of every night, you had to do an inventory every single night, right? And I thought, "Nobody does that." Maybe there are some people who do but...

0:46:47 Benn: Well, and again, I think getting involved in this process and, like you said, it doesn't take long for me to realize these days when something's bothering me and what is something I need to take a look at. Like, geez, 30 minutes, something's usually resolved or I do something about it.

0:47:02 John: Yeah, same here.

0:47:03 Benn: It's not usually something that sits around. And I do, I thank AA for that.

0:47:07 John: I do to. I think it's a strength that... Some people honestly don't have that. There are some people who are not alcoholics who do not have the capacity to say, I'm wrong about anything. Or even have any empathy for other people and how other people feel. So I am glad that I have that and I do practise that a lot. I have absolutely no problem with it.

0:47:33 Benn: Right.

0:47:33 John: Because I understand that if I'm wrong, it's not like I'm bad. Even if I've done something bad. I don't internalize it in as that's me. I just see myself as a human being where we're all doing this kind of crap. Every person does this kind of crap. Nobody is a saint.

0:47:58 Benn: It makes me think of something on page 91. "In all these situations we need self restraint," it talks about a bunch of situations, "before honest analysis of what is involved," and I underlined this and I put, "Yes, yes, yes", "A willingness to admit when the fault is ours and an equal willingness to forgive when the fault is elsewhere. We need not be discouraged when we fall into the error of our old ways, for these disciplines are not easy. We shall look for progress, not perfection." Now, if the tone of the books were always like that, it's very understanding, it's very self­forgiving, but that is it right there. And I like to think that when you go through the step process you get to that place where you...

0:48:38 Benn: Well, I found that I have a humility about myself because I've learned to look at my own crap and not be burdened by it, but yet not forget it. And something about that allows me to be more forgiving of others and the book even says, they're just people who are spiritually sick as well and trying to make their way through the world. I wouldn't put it that way, but that's the truth, when I'm in a good place and in a good state of mind.

0:49:02 John: I'm glad you read that, because I wanted to talk about that too, the whole thing of restraint, because that's one area where I'm really, really bad. I'm not very good at practising restraint, but it is extra hard to do nowadays with Facebook, email, instant messaging, text messaging. When they wrote about restraint of tongue and pen in the Big Book, at that time you would actually have to write a letter, the pen... You had to physically write a letter and take it to the mailbox and mail it to somebody. So the restraint, you have a little bit of time to think about restraint. And I think even on the phone you might have had to call the operator and have them connect you to somebody. [chuckle]

0:49:47 Benn: Yup, one ringy dingy.

0:49:50 John: Now it's like, "I'm gonna go on Facebook and tell everybody off," and people do that. And then people feel really, really crappy about it too. Or you're at work and you say, "Goddamn! They really pissed me off over there in accounts payable. I'm gonna let them know exactly how I feel."

0:50:07 Benn: I'm gonna CC their manager.

0:50:09 John: "I'm gonna CC their manager." Yeah. Or, "He CC'd his manager on me and that pisses me off." So the restraint is really important nowadays.

0:50:20 Benn: It is.

0:50:21 John: And I would think... I don't know how I would've handled it as when I was first getting sober, if they would've had the internet back then. Boy, I don't know.

0:50:33 Benn: Yeah, it's so important just to take a day at least on stuff like that, like work stuff. Or sending out an email, it's just like, "Okay. Let it sit there in drafts," and before I send it or something, it's... It's definitely good and you know the part of this too where it talks about "ceasing fighting anyone and everything". That's good advice but again, I think sometimes it gets taken so far in the rooms that we are hyper­tolerant to things that go on in the room sometimes, too. 'Cause there is some really nasty shit that goes on sometimes in meetings.

0:51:05 Benn: Like one time, these guys were just talking the crudest stuff about women, and I'm sure I was thought of as being some self­righteous liberal whatever do­gooder, but it was on and on. And this one guy finally said, "The only problem I have in relationships is getting a woman out of my bed the next morning, goddammit." And then this went on for like 25 minutes in the meeting and finally I got pissed, but I didn't say it pissed. But I was just like, "We need to be careful in this room because there are women in this meeting right now."

0:51:37 Benn: And I go, "Alcoholics and addicts, studies would show that 80% of women in recovery have had some form of sexual abuse upon them. So we need to be really careful how we talk in here." Now, okay, love and tolerance is our code, but sometimes something needs to be said. And I didn't say it like a dick and I'm sure some people are like, "Ooh, aren't we Mr... " whatever. But nobody said anything to me during the meeting but after the meeting I had about five or six women come up to me and say, "Thank you so much for standing up for that in the meeting."

0:52:11 Benn: So sometimes it feels like, AA, we're so careful to mind the traditions and love and tolerance is our code that some really fucked up shit just gets... Like some guy was making fun of gay people in a meeting one time and I stopped him and I said, "I really don't appreciate you saying that. Please continue your share, but I feel really offended when you talk like that in the meeting. I'd appreciate it if you didn't."

0:52:36 John: That stuff is wrong. My old home group was a men's group and, believe it or not, there wasn't a lot of anti­women talk there. There wasn't any disrespectful talk about women like that. But there was a time, for whatever weird reason, people were making gay jokes a lot. And they were just making these stupid jokes. But I knew there were gay people that came to our group and they would sit in the meetings at that, but all of a sudden they started leaving, the gay people left our meeting. And I remember I said, I was talking to an older guy at the meeting and I said, "Why did all these guys leave?" And he said, "Well, all the gay bashing." And I said, "But those were just jokes." He says, "Yeah, but if it was directed at you, you wouldn't think it was so funny." And it was kind of a teaching moment for me, and I realized how horribly bad that was, that kind of humor.

0:53:31 John: You don't do that, you don't laugh at other people. If you wanna make fun of somebody, make fun of yourself, but don't do that with other people, and especially in AA, where it could be someone's life on the line. Everybody has to feel comfortable and welcome there. We've got to be totally inclusive. We have a real responsibility to that in AA, to be very respectful of people and the diversity of others.

0:53:58 Benn: Well, I'm gonna 'fess up here, I did that at a meeting once, not what you're saying, but I made a joke at the expense of somebody in AA who most people in our town don't really care for that much, and I made the joke at his expense and he wasn't at the meeting. It was totally shitty of me and I felt like shit almost immediately after I did it, and then I went back to that group the next week and apologized for that. And I said just what you said, I said, "This needs to be a place where everybody feels comfortable and doesn't feel like they're gonna get made fun of by somebody somewhere else." And I go, "I totally violated everybody by telling that joke last week and I feel really bad about it and I wanna apologize to the group, because this does need to feel like a safe place."

0:54:47 John: That's interesting. I remember I did something like that once, I actually went to my group and I apologized for some damn thing, I can't remember what it was. It might have been something similar to that, where I just felt really bad and I went to the whole group and I just apologized for being a jerk or whatever. I guess that's all a part of Step 10 too. It's like, "Yeah. I screwed up and I shouldn't have said what I said," but it's good that we can do that.

0:55:16 John: So many people don't have that ability but then again those people... Here's the thing about these steps too, I guess I shouldn't be patting myself on the back about being such a goody goody two shoes. The reason that I do this is only because I feel it, because I need to, because if it didn't bother me it's no big deal. I wouldn't have to worry about it. When we were talking about making amends, I didn't make amends for like, we were talking about the example of running over the stop sign in the city park.

0:55:51 John: Well, I wouldn't make amends for that because it didn't bother me, for whatever reason. It didn't bother my conscience that I ran over the stop sign in the city park and I didn't ever really do that, but I did things similar to that and I didn't ever make amends for those things. But for someone else who it bothers their conscience, they would need to do that. Well, that's how I feel about this program. I do it because if it bothers my conscience, then I need to do something about it, because then it's a threat to my sobriety, but if it doesn't bother my conscience, I don't have to worry about it.

0:56:20 Benn: Right. And that's probably gonna be different for different people, and we don't need to press that on other people. But it's not that I say, "Well, it doesn't bother me, so screw it, I'm not gonna do that." But it's more like we gain that consciousness, we gain our own sense of conscious and if something's bothering me, it is a cue that I need to do something about it. 0:56:40 John: Exactly, it's a cue that there's something wrong that you need to look at and take some action on.

0:56:47 Benn: Yeah, it's like a sliver under the skin and it's festering and it says, "Pay attention to me. Do something about this and if you don't, you're gonna have a problem." And that's what happened to me when I made that bad joke in that meeting, too. I felt immediately bad for it. The interesting thing was there was probably four or five dogmatic people in that meeting, who really, really dislike that guy as well, and they came up to me and said, "That was a really good joke." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it was awful of me to do it." And again, sometimes I think we get off on pretending or posturing in meetings that we've got this all figured out, or like, "I really know the book" or, "I know this," where it's something simple like that that, okay, the 12 by 12 says, "Pain is the beginning of all spiritual growth," or whatever.

0:57:43 Benn: So it's like that pain and then modeling that, not that I'm trying to model that behavior for anybody else in that meeting, but even with someone I sponsor, to tell on myself and talk about how bad I fuck up sometimes and then how I made it right, that's how we all learn from each other. And when we share that stuff in meetings, it's good. And that's why, again, that's why these rigid meetings really bother me, because it feels like so much posturing and it is so not human; it is just like... Not that I go about and I fuck things up just so I can be great at apologizing, but those are the moments that really matter, and I find I feel something; it feels good to make something right and to be able to look at yourself.

0:58:28 Benn: And I actually called that guy up that I made fun of in that meeting too and apologized to him. That could have been something where it could have been, "Except when to harm others would cause harm to them," but I assumed it would get back to him, because we all know things tend to fly around AA pretty quick.

0:58:47 Benn: And him and I had a better relationship after that too, because we talked on the phone for a long time about that. I was kind of making fun of the fact of how long he talks and that he says the exact same thing over and over, over. And he's like, "Well, I do do that, but yeah... " But it was a good moment and it was growth and it's because I had that little sliver festering that said, "You need to pay attention to something here." And it's cool to be able to pay attention to that voice anymore because, again, I think we talked about this last time, I ignored those little voices for a long time that said, "Pay attention, do something here, you need to take some action." That was the symbolic part of being an alcoholic for me, it was I never dealt with anything that needed dealt with.

0:59:35 John: I didn't either. I drank as soon as I got off of work and stayed drunk for the rest of the night, so I never had to process anything that went on during the day. And you know, I never had to think about it, whatever was going on with me. That was my life or that was how I drank. So I like this step. Now when we get into Step 11, I might have trouble with that one, because I don't think I'd do step 11. There was a time... If step 11... Okay, there's different ways of looking at it. I guess if step 11 is all about trying to find peace and serenity and calm, then I guess I'd do it. But if step 11 is meditating and trying to seek some kind of awareness through meditation, I don't do that, and I don't really do a practice of that at a particular time of the day to actually meditate. But I think I'm gonna try for a little while before we do step 11, just to see how it goes.

1:00:39 Benn: Oh, yeah. I think it can be great. Obviously, I'll have more to say about that too, but it's... To me it can be, for some people it's going for a bike ride. For some people...

1:00:48 John: Yes.

1:00:49 Benn: It's going to a movie, it's about self care, it's about doing things that nurture your... I'm not gonna say soul, but it's that nurtures that part of you that needs nurtured.

1:01:00 John: Yes.

1:01:00 Benn: It's like taking active time for yourself to center yourself, calm yourself. Some people go garden. Some people mess with their plants and...

1:01:07 John: That stuff is so important.

1:01:08 Benn: Dead­head their flowers, and yeah.

1:01:09 John: I'm deficient in that area right now, and I need to do something about that, because I used to love to ride my bike and run. And for me that was, especially running, was like meditation, because next thing you know, your body is just doing, you get in a rhythm and you're not even thinking about what's going on and you kind of clear out a lot of thoughts, a lot of negativity, and you just feel positive and happy after you run. But, man, I don't do that anymore because I spend so much time on my computer working on AA Beyond Belief.

1:01:39 Benn: It's, like you said, it's something we've gotta pay attention to and we gotta do for ourselves. It's another tool, it's the meetings and the book are not the only tools we have.

1:01:49 John: Yeah, I agree with that.

1:01:50 Benn: There's lots of ways. There's sometimes where I know people who've been sober 30 years who didn't go to meetings for two years, but they read their daily stuff and they had their stuff they did and they were still connected with recoveries type stuff or... It's, I don't know, there's lots...

1:02:05 John: I'm gonna really try to get serious about step 11 before we talk about it next month, just so I can... 'Cause I think there is some benefit to it and I am gonna incorporate... Maybe it would be a good time for me to start walking at least and get in some exercise again, 'cause, boy...

1:02:25 Benn: One of my coworkers that I used to work with, she had a meeting that she did at her home that was mindful recovery and they did meditation and it was strictly a meditation meeting and it was very Buddhist­like and yeah, really cool. I know more diverse places in Lincoln, Nebraska that have more of those but, yeah, it's cool. I also wanted to say about step 10 that, I don't like the sentence where it says, "We have a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition," but I get behind that sentence, because this whole step is about maintenance.

1:03:03 Benn: It's about staying on top of things so that we're prepared when things do come up. It's not, "I used to think if things were good, then I don't have to worry about anything," but the thing is I need to stay on top of things so that... God, I just had a friend's sister who just died, 48 years old, out of the blue, they had no idea what happened, she was found unconscious and she's dead. There are things that are gonna come up in our life that you can't plan... You can plan for them, we know they're all coming, but you just have to do the work to be prepared for them when they come up. That's a lot of what this is about.

1:03:41 John: Yep, I agree.

1:03:42 Benn: And that's why it means a lot for me because, again, I'm not saying I had everything figured out before I came to AA, but there are lots of times I did all these things that are very similar to what AA asked us to do, and thing was, I just quit doing them because I thought, "Okay, I'm good now.". And then eventually I drank and eventually I felt shitty and eventually I took it out on other people and eventually I hated myself again.

1:04:06 John: Well, you told me that you are gonna go be in Austin.

1:04:11 Benn: That is the plan as of right now, my wife's gonna take work off that Friday and I'm gonna fly out super early Friday morning and then fly back Sunday night.

1:04:19 John: Great. Well, that'll be nice.

1:04:21 Benn: I have not bought my plane ticket yet, or my ticket to the Convention but that is the plan.

1:04:26 John: Well that's awesome. I'm driving down with three other people from Ka s City, we're driving in one car. And I think I'm getting there on Thursday and then I'm leaving on Monday morning, or something like that. It's gonna be quite a stay down there, but I'm looking forward to it more and more. There's one thing I'm gonna... I'm on two panels. One I'm gonna be on is gonna be called, "What is WAAFT?" and I'm not quite sure what they're gonna be talking about on that, but what I wanna talk about is what I envision for the secular movement in AA, and so I'm gonna talk about WAAFT Central, which is kind of like a service organization. We get people... And I'm gonna talk about that too. As a segue, I'll even mention this right now.

1:05:17 John: If you're in Ames, Iowa and you wanna start an agnostic meeting, send us an e­mail. If you're in Perth, Western Australia, send us an e­mail if you wanna start and agnostic AA meeting or if you're in Gloucester, Massachusetts, because we've been contacted by people in those three places, they contacted WAAFT Central, people in those three areas, that wanna start agnostic AA meetings there. If you're in Perth, Western Australia or Gloucester, Massachusetts or Ames, Iowa. And you're an agnostic, atheist or freethinker and you want an AA meeting. Send us an e­mail we'll connect you with somebody. But that's what I wanna talk about, that's WAAFT Central. WAAFT Central has a phone number and it has an e­mail and it's got pamphlets and it's got meeting, whatever you call it... Meeting things, formats and stuff like that.

1:06:08 John: If you wanna start an agnostic AA meeting, there's all kinds of materials to tell you how to do that. There's like a really state­of­the­art meeting directory, where you can locate meetings wherever you are. We're working on a page on a deal, where if you wanna start a meeting some place where one doesn't exist, there's gonna be a map where you can go and you can look. And if you don't see a meeting in your city, you can place a pin on the map, okay, and then put your contact information there, so that the next time someone comes along from your city and they wanna start a meeting there, they can find you and we're gonna try to meet people up like that.

1:06:48 Benn: Oh, cool. 1:06:49 John: So, that's what WAAFT Central does. It's a service organizations for agnostics, atheists and freethinkers in AA. You've got that. Then I'm gonna talk about that. Then I'm gonna talk about AA Beyond Belief as sort of the grapevine of Agnostic AA, but I don't want it to replace the Grapevine, because I want us and Agnostic AA to get more involved with the actual AA Grapevine. So, AA Beyond Belief is just a place for us to kinda get together and share our experience, strength and hope and form a community is how I kinda see that.

1:07:24 John: And then what's the other thing? The Convention... And then the Convention would be the place where we all get together every two years to share ideas. And I think from that Convention, there's a lot of energy where people go out. There's gonna be another couple of hundred meetings start over the next two years, probably, if what happens this time happened... I'm sorry, I'm rambling, but I'm gonna do that thing, that's what I'm gonna talk about.

1:07:50 John: Then the other one I'm on is about how to get along with traditional AA, and I'm probably the worst person to be on that panel, because I never even go to regular AA meetings anymore, but I do go to... I'm gonna talk about getting involved in general service, I guess, is what I'm gonna talk about.

1:08:03 Benn: Yeah, you've been great at that. I commend you for that a lot. And for anybody else listening, I was blown away when we went to Santa Monica. It was great. We were talking about earlier, the tone of... It just felt so easy to talk to everybody and it felt easy to share ideas and it felt easy in the workshops, too, just say what was on your heart and to even go to... We had round­the­ clock meetings basically the whole time, too. And I think that's the plan here. There's always gonna be a meeting going on in one of the rooms and just the different, smoother, kinder tone, in general. There are meetings like that that are traditional meetings too that I go to, but it was just so heart­ warming.

1:08:47 John: Plus people... There's a lot of excitement and energy there about AA like you never see at any other AA convention as far as I'm concerned, where people are actually starting... Talking about starting meetings or learning how to start meetings and stuff like that... That, I think, is fascinating,' cause people come there and a lot of them have never been to an agnostic AA meeting before and they learn about it, they get excited and then they go off to their town afterwards and they get a group started.

1:09:15 John: So, there's little... Real good stuff like that gets done. There's a lot of things I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to, the Executive Editor of the Grapevine will be there and she's gonna give a workshop on how to submit articles to the Grapevine. And I'm gonna go to that, 'cause I wanna learn how to do that, but I wanna encourage people to start writing, agnostics, atheists, freethinkers to start writing to the Grapevine, submitting their stories and commenting on other stories that are there, because if we write in large numbers, the Grapevine will post our stuff, because they really wanna reflect the membership.

1:09:56 John: And I think what's happening is that we read the Grapevine and we look at it and we think, "Well, this is crap. I can't relate to it," so we don't even bother interacting with it, but they've kinda changed my opinion, because I read that most recent issue that they came out with...

1:10:11 Benn: Yeah. I was just gonna ask you that.

1:10:12 John: I love it. I love it. In fact, I'm writing a review of it and I'm having kind of a hard time. I wanna get that finished up this weekend. So it's kind of changed my opinion. And I think that we need to incorporate the Grapevine into our whole thing.

1:10:26 Benn: I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the first few stories I did, and, yeah, they were good. It just made me think about how they chose the stories they chose. They still kind of had the traditional AA feel to them a little bit. I so appreciate that they're doing it, I really do, but it's like... I don't know, maybe I'm just looking for too much to be bothered by, but it's like, "Why did they choose this story and not another one?" It's like you still kinda had to praise the steps in the process and mention your sponsor.

1:10:56 John: Well, you can ask the Executive Editor those questions, 'cause she's gonna be at Austin and she's gonna be on a panel for literature. And it would be really interesting to ask her about how they chose those stories and stuff.

1:11:10 Benn: Yeah, it would. Kudos to her for coming.

1:11:13 John: Yeah, I think so, too. I thought their issue... I thought it was really good. I was pretty surprised. Like I said, I've not been a huge reader of the Grapevine, because even when I was a practising member... I mean when I was a believer, praying on my knees­type stuff guy, I think even the religiosity of the Grapevine was too much even for me [chuckle] But I don't know... I thought the stories, when I read it, the first story, the guy talked about not liking the Lord's Prayer, but they've done that in the Grapevine before, and, oh, boy, oh, yeah, he talked about a lot of stuff in the Big Book that he doesn't necessarily need, and I liked that.

1:11:57 Benn: You're right, you're right.

1:12:00 John: There was some stuff that was kind of... That used some criticisms that you don't normally hear, but...

1:12:04 Benn: I would love to see the letters they get this next month after that issue came out from some of the more traditional members.

1:12:10 John: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that, too, and to see the reaction from our community, too, because it's kind of mixed. When I first read it, I was blown away by it. I was almost moved emotionally by it, I thought it was really amazing, but then I talked to someone else and they said, "Oh, they didn't go far enough, this is... " But it's a good beginning.

1:12:33 Benn: Right, yeah, and it will be interesting to me, 'cause it's almost like gives more validity to us, right?

1:12:41 John: Exactly.

1:12:42 Benn: I even mentioned that it... And I intentionally use the word atheist when it feels like it's proper, not every meeting I go to do I go, "I'm an atheist," but I'm trying to use the word because I don't wanna... I don't like the stigma around it. So I'll be interested to see if that softens the pushback.

1:13:00 John: There's a deep emotional need that I don't think we always talk about or admit, and I think a lot of us refuse to even acknowledge that it exists, but I think there's a huge need for us to be accepted by the rest of AA.

1:13:12 Benn: Yeah.

1:13:13 John: I think that there really is. We want to be accepted by the rest of AA and we feel like we aren't, 'cause when we... We brought someone from my group, they ordered a bunch of copies of that issue. They brought it to the meeting and one guy opened it, he didn't even know that Grapevine was doing this. And he looked at it and he could not believe what he saw, and he said, "This gives us legitimacy," he said. He felt like we weren't legitimate. That's the feeling that we have. So yeah, it's very interesting. Very interesting.

1:13:45 Benn: Well, again, that's the tone that gets made out to be everywhere, too. There's so much group­think that goes on. But it does give legitimacy to it, and legitimacy that we should have had all along.

1:13:54 John: Yeah. We do have it, we have it, we just don't feel like it sometimes, or we feel like we need to hear it from the rest of AA because some of us have been hurt.

1:14:03 Benn: Right. Well, I even think that's why it was great we had Ward Ewing speak at the first one. I know that was super controversial, but I really liked that talk. It was great. I still go back and listen to it sometimes.

1:14:14 John: It was a great tape. It was a really good talk. In fact, I think I'll post a link to it on this podcast for people to listen to.

1:14:21 Benn: But the point you made, too, was that I think we do, we want to know that we belong or that we wanna be made to feel that we belong. Which I mean, it's maybe not good to feel that way, but I think some of the more traditionalists think we want to take over AA and turn it into this and turn it into that. I don't think that's it at all.

1:14:41 John: Some of them tell us just to leave and start our own thing.

1:14:44 Benn: Right. Yeah.

1:14:46 John: It's like, no, why don't you leave and start your own thing? [chuckle]

1:14:50 Benn: Again, if you look at all the quotes form Bill through the years, he didn't think all this needed to be so dogmatic and revere the book and there's plenty of... I don't know. We're supposed to be taking our own inventory and anything that doesn't change and evolve a little bit with time gets left behind.

1:15:05 John: Well, it'll be fun. It's hard to believe it's just next month, so.

1:15:10 Benn: It snuck up.

1:15:11 John: It'll be good to see you.

1:15:12 Benn: Yeah, it'll be really good to see you, too. 1:15:14 John: Yep.

1:15:15 Benn: I look forward to meeting lots of people I've seen, too, on our Facebook group and that write on AA Beyond Belief and then I'm wondering if it's people that I knew, that I met last time that I didn't remember that I met.

1:15:26 John: Yes. I know there's gonna be a lot of people that I met in Santa Monica, who they say, "Gosh, John, I don't even remember meeting you." I said, "I know." I'll know them next time.

1:15:34 Benn: It's tough. Well, I think it took me a while to warm up out in Santa Monica, too. I think the first day I was a little shy at first and then by the second night I was talking with everyone and by then it was over, and I was kind of like "God, Benn, why didn't you talk to more people to begin with?"

1:15:48 John: Now that's going to be really interesting, too, to see because I was the same way. I was like... I'm not always really good at mingling and small talk and doing stuff like that, so I was hanging out with RJ a lot, and she always made things easier, 'cause she was so bubbly and happy.

1:16:06 Benn: Especially that weekend, holy cow.

1:16:08 John: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see this time, 'cause I do know so many people, but I know them online. I know them either by email or Facebook. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if I'm just gonna wanna be hiding somewhere.

1:16:25 Benn: Yeah. And it's... Everybody will be staying at the same place for the most part, too.

1:16:29 John: Yeah. That'll be nice too. Alright, Benn, I'll talk to you later.

1:16:34 Benn: Yeah, sounds good, John.

1:16:35 John: You have a nice rest of the weekend.

1:16:37 Benn: Yeah, you too, man. Appreciate it.

1:16:39 John: Bye.

1:16:40 Benn: Bye.

1:16:41 John: Well, that's it for another episode of AA Beyond Belief the Podcast. Hope you enjoyed the program. We'll be back again next week, speaking with Yvonne H from the Mainly Agnostics group in Portland, Maine. Until then, you all take care and be well.

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