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Good morning, podcast, Path to Warren podcast. This is July 10. It is 5:54am in the morning. And welcome to another episode. So this is episode 10. And so happy everybody is here. And you came to listen to this podcast. I can’t believe it’s already ten episodes. But this morning I wanted to share about what my conception of a Higher Power was when I was growing up and how that has changed today. This is kind of a big topic for me. So it might take multiple podcasts to get this one right. But Higher Power is something that when I was going through therapy and I was meeting with a counselor on a regular basis, he asked me one day as he was introducing the idea of going to a twelve step program, he said, do you believe in a Higher Power? And it was almost like I was blown away that he would ask me something like that. I answered yes, oh, yeah, I believe in God. Yeah. But I really didn’t put any kind of faith in it at the time. It wasn’t like it was my God. I didn’t feel at the time about two and a half years ago, I did not feel like he was actually my God. I just thought of it as a God. My dad worshiped a God that my grandmother worshiped their version of God. That was all that I knew, what I learned was and I’m so glad it worked out this way because I can’t imagine what would have happened in my life if I walked into my first twelve step meeting and been told that this is a religious program. I thought it was so cliche. And I often actually told my therapist, I said, you know, I think it’s kind of cliche that you hear on the news. This actor or this musician, this celebrity just got sober and he just got out of rehab and he’s got a new religion. Now he found a higher power. He’s got religion. And that was my perception of it because all I knew was religion. I did not know I really didn’t know that you could find a Higher Power and not claim a certain religion. But what I’ve learned and this is the coolest part is that spirituality is much greater than religion. I had no concept of that. I had never heard about that before. To anybody who’s listening out there when I was drinking and drugging and away from God, what happened was I was without spirit. I was like a walking zombie. There was no spirit inside of me. The goal for me and the goal for early on in this whole recovery process was to realize that there’s a higher power out there and it realize it’s not me and I realized that it’s going to take something of a Higher Power to come in here and help me of this addiction that I’m struggling with. That was step one to admit that I’m powerless over the addiction. That’s a big deal. But there’s two parts of it. The first part is to admit that I’m powerless. And the second part is to surrender to a higher power and ask a higher power to help me deal with this whole addiction. And I really believe that if I would have come into AA or DA, Debtors Anonymous or any other program, if I had come into this program and they had started talking about any one religion, like Catholic, Presbyterian, just pick one. If they started talking to me about that, I would have been totally turned away. But all they told me was, hey, it doesn’t matter what Higher Power you pick. Just find something. The God of your understanding is the goal. Don’t try to worry about believing in or relying on or trusting in a Higher Power. That’s your grandma’s God. Trust and try to find your Higher Power. And its the easiest concept for me to understand, it just took the pressure away. It took the pain of having to say, I think the God of my childhood abandoned me. Okay, we’ll find another Higher Power. Find another Higher Power. I grew up in a family where my dad was Deacon of the Church. So Christianity was not a question. That was what it was. We were at Church nearly every Saturday. Every Sunday. If we weren’t on vacation, we were at Church every Sunday. But what’s crazy is, growing up, I really fit in pretty well. In high school, I started playing guitar. And I’ve always been like a leader with anything and everything that I’ve done. Whether it’s swimming or Boy Scouts or in school, I tended to be more on the leader side of things. When I learned how to play guitar, sure enough, I ended up being the praise worship guitar player in this little praise band. I was involved with that FCA at one point in high school, so I just kind of fit into the Christian box in high school. But something happened when I took that first drink I heard yesterday in the meeting, somebody said, It’s not the first drink that gets you drunk. It’s not the first drink that an alcoholic has to worry about. And I’m like, what? That’s not what I heard. He said, for me, it’s the first sip, the first SIP that starts the craving for an alcoholic. And that’s so true. When I first took that sip when I was at a prom my junior year, I took the first sip of a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Never forget it. And that’s the sign of an alcoholic, too. I heard or read somewhere alcoholics remember their first drink. Why? Because it has such a profound effect on our body and our mind. Isn’t that crazy? I asked my wife the other day. I said, when was the first time you had a drink? She doesn’t remember. I just think that that’s amazing how the bodies. Our bodies are all so different some people don’t even. It wasn’t that big of a deal. They don’t remember the first time they had the first sip of alcohol. And I remember it was after our junior prom. We all went back to my buddy William’s Lake house. His parents Lake house. It was in Irmo, and there was a small little bonfire type party. Not much going on, but it was on like this Peninsula. And we were all out by the fire and somebody had a cooler sitting over here to the right side of the bonfire. And it was dark. And towards the end of the, I don’t know, about three quarters of the way through the party, there are two Mike’s hard lemonades over there. I’d go ahead and take them. Some girl had left and they were hers. So I took one and downed it and threw the empty bottle in the Lake. And then I drank to cover up the evidence like it mattered. And then I drank the other one as fast as I can or could. I didn’t walk around with it. Well, I never thought about that. But that was the first sign of an alcoholic, wasn’t it? Just sitting there chugging the first drink. Wow. I didn’t even sit there and sip on it. I didn’t sip on it because I didn’t want to get caught. But what’s amazing is I’m realizing right this second that I was an alcoholic from the absolute first step. That’s kind of deep thought about that before in that detail. So when I came to 12 Step program and started reading into this whole recovery process, of course, I’m one of these guys that like to read in and do my research before I just join into something. When I got to the park art about page seven, I believe it is where Doctor Bob is explaining about the physical allergy. That’s something that blew me away and it clicked right away. I totally understood what an allergy is. When I was eleven, I went all you could eat crab leg night, and I just gorged binged on crab legs at this restaurant. It wasn’t a real high class restaurant. It was one of these all you could eat buffets. Well, I didn’t really make it out to the parking lot. My throat started to swell up and I went into anaphylactic shock. The allergiest The next day after I went to the hospital, the allergist told my mom, and he told me, he said, let me just be very clear with you. This is not something that you could eat. One shrimp today, two shrimp tomorrow, three shrimp the next day. If you eat this shrimp, you’re going to die. You could very well die on the first shrimp or the third shrimp. We don’t really know. All we know is that you’re allergic to it. And so I got very clear from that point on, I got real clear real quick on the fact that I need to realize that I could die from eating strip. It made it so much easier for me to understand that as an alcoholic. The big book says as an alcoholic, it’s a physical allergy plus a mental obsession equals alcoholism. I believe that I’ve had the middle obsession piece because I get obsessed about whatever I’m doing and I become all in on it. It doesn’t matter what it is if it’s a sport, if it’s a project or a business. And I think that those are assets. I think it’s an asset to be obsessed and have a mindset that if you want something so bad you’re going to do whatever it takes to get it. I would not have sold two businesses. I would not have started and sold two businesses by age 23 if I was not of the obsessed mindset. And I think it’s an inherited thing. I know it is. My grandmother, we would often joke because before she would leave the house at like 85 years old or so before she would leave her house, she’d have to go to the kitchen, look at the stove, make sure each eye was off and say 1-2-3-4 0-F-F-F. She would look at the eyes and make sure they were all off. And she had these rituals that were today an obsession. Any kind of storm was coming. She would run around and unplug every item in the house, everything from the walls, the TVs, everything got unplugged. If there was going to be a storm, anytime she’d grab a dish or bowl or cup out of the kitchen, out of the cabinet, she’d have to rinse it and wipe it out obsessively before she handed it to me. I love my grandmother. She just passed away about a year ago. Well, it’s not I love her, but it’s just that I love her and that she had the obsessive mindset. I don’t think that there’s a problem with that today. I embrace it today. I accept it, but it’s a fact. It’s a fact that I’ve learned to just understand. So it made perfectly good sense to me when I read Matt, you have a physical allergy to this substance plus a mental obsession, it equals alcoholism. It’s not much more than that. It’s not some complicated disease I got to read much more to figure out. So I was so excited when it clicked that I ended up calling my mom, telling her about this book that my therapist had given me. She was helping to pay for my therapy at the time because I was broke as a joke, so far in debt. She ended up helping me pay for this therapy session. But it helped me so much that when we would go out to eat at restaurants and places like that and I was just new and sobriety, I would treat it just like I would if it was shellfish, when we would eat shellfish or when we would go out to dinner with friends with a work function or wherever it was. Do you think I let everybody know that I’m allergic to shellfish? No, I did that in the past when I was early on with my allergy. I did that in the past. And guess what happened? People as they’re eating their shrimp, eating their shrimp and grits next to you, they’ll be like, oh, Matt, this is so good. I hate that you have an allergy. Oh, man, one day. Maybe you could try it one day. It’s so good. They’ll say things like that or they’ll want to know, you can’t eat this shrimp, you can’t eat crab legs. What happened? Did you ever experience something that caused you to know that you’re allergic? They’ll say things like that and then what do you got to do? Then you got to go through the whole story. Oh, yeah. When I was eleven, I tried to eat crab legs. I almost died. So it causes you to bring back all that pain and go through the story the exact same thing. It works the exact same way with alcohol. If I am sitting at a big table with a bunch of people that don’t really know me or don’t know my backstory, like at a work function or something, when it comes time to order drinks, if I were to say, no, I’m an alcoholic, I can’t drink that or no, I’m good, I don’t drink. People are going to take it two ways. They’re going to say, oh, man, you should try this Margarita. It’s so good. You should try this bourbon and Sprite. It’s the best bourbon. Oh, my gosh, I hate you can’t drink this. Or they’ll say, Tell me about what happened. You say you’re an alcoholic. Did something happen? Did you get a DUI? Tell me about what happened. That’s why it clicked so well. I learned at restaurants and places like that to simply say, I’d like to have a steak and a steak and a salad, please, or a steak and potato instead of talking real loud and saying, no, I can’t have the shrimp and the crab legs because I’m allergic to shellfish. And you know what? I can’t have the French Fries either because that’s also fried in the same grease. I don’t go into those stories. I don’t explain all of that. They don’t need to know all that. I simply say, hey, I’d like to have a steak and potato. It takes the attention off of me. And that’s exactly what I needed early on in sobriety. I highly recommend anybody in sobriety keep the fact that you’re not drinking to yourself as long as possible. That’s what worked for me. This is my experience. It helps nobody to sit there and have to go through the pain of everybody knowing that you’re not drinking. Although people might know, people probably realize something’s different. People probably realize when you’re not making a fool of yourself at dinner, they probably catch on that something is different. You’re not the one trying to stay late. You’re not the one trying to go to an after party. Once they realize that, they probably get it, that they just don’t know what’s going on. They don’t quite know the difference. But you don’t have to be the one to tell them. Let them ask you. And I’ve always had the feeling that as a person in recovery, it’s my obligation, it’s my duty. When somebody asked me specifically, hey, what’s different about you? Or, hey, you guys look really happy, or, hey, your color has restored in your face. You’re not white, or you look really like you’ve got spirit. It’s my duty to tell them, yes, I’m in a twelve step program, or, hey, I found God and I found AA. Or I found AA, which then led me to God. Yeah, I’m doing a lot better. I quit drinking. Any of those answers is something that I feel like I am obligated to share. If somebody asks one of our principles in the program, is it’s a “Law of Attraction, not the Law of Promotion”. What does that mean? Well, it means that I’m not going to sit there and advertise to the entire table or to a party I walk into. Yeah, I’m not drinking anymore. Yeah, I found AA I’m not doing that. That is promotion. Law of Attraction is to say I’m doing so well that people notice and people want what I’ve got then and only then when they come and ask, do you say, yeah, let me tell you about what I got going on. It’s the greatest thing. It changed my world. My life is totally different. Which one would you rather hear? Which one do you think actually works? Yeah, it’s the Law of Attraction. So the whole Higher Power situation, I’m so grateful that, like I said, when I came in, it wasn’t talked about that I had to follow something that I had to pray to a certain figure or person. It’s very strategic that certain names were left out. We don’t talk about Jesus in the room. We don’t talk about being a sinner. We don’t talk about any of the specific religion based words. Those are not mentioned. It’s very much what your Higher Power is. You get to define what the Higher Power is. Growing up, I never forget. What I know is my Father’s Higher Power and my Grandmother’s Higher Power. That God to me was a very condemning God. That’s my interpretation. Now that’s my interpretation. At the time of coming out of recovery, I had fallen so far away from God that I thought I was for sure going to hell. I don’t know why. I really don’t know. I honestly would love to have the answer. I never saw my Grandmother on either side or my Grandfather the only one that I knew. I never saw any one of those people drink alcohol. I don’t understand it. It blew my mind as a College kid. I just did not understand it. Could not fathom why they didn’t drink. Well, looking at it now, another sign of an alcoholic. I thought for sure that there was no way to go 24 hours without a drink. Doesn’t that sound like an alcoholic? Yeah. And I would like challenge that maybe once or twice by actually going 24 hours or a little bit without a drink just to see if I could do it, thinking that, oh, I’ve made it this far. I can’t be an alcoholic. It’s funny. Last weekend I had a person asked me, this lady on the beach, our kids have become good friends. And she asked me, she said, I made it till 5:00pm without wine. That means I’m not an alcoholic, right? I kind of laughed. But I told her, I said, no, that doesn’t mean you’re not an alcoholic. Anybody that’s thinking that way, anybody that’s thinking about that might have a problem with alcohol. But here’s the thing. Nobody can tell somebody that they’re an alcoholic. They have to determine for themselves they’re an alcoholic. So what I learned really quickly is that my Higher Power and I choose to call him God as a way of just making it an easy name that everybody understands. If everybody believes in a certain Higher Power and we all choose to call him or her or it God, then it makes communication amongst ourselves a lot easier. It’s just easier to say than Higher Power. My Higher Power today loves me. And I really believe that. I really believe that by surrendering to Him my problem with drinking and surrendering to Him asking for help, asking Him to keep me sober, please, for the next 24 hours. And at the end of the day, I’ll tell him, hey, last night, lying in bed, I said, thank you, God, for keeping me sober and solvent. I’m so grateful I am. There’s no way I could have done it by myself. That is a Higher Power that I can trust, one that has helped me get out of this whole situation. When I say get out of the situation, I’m only out of it. For the next 24 hours, I feel like I’ve got a daily reprieve. The big book tells me that we have a daily reprieve from alcohol contingent upon the condition of our spirituality. So, to the condition that I am trusting my Higher Power to the condition that I have surrendered it and saying, hey, I can’t do this. If that condition is small, like if I’m not trusting in Him, then I am not very sober right now. If I trusting in Him and I surrender it and I have a high level of spirituality and I know that he’s God and my ego is not in the way. All of my character defects are at Bay, or at least minimal, then my serenity and my sobriety are extremely high. So I only can stay sober based on the maintenance of my Spirituality. I’m so grateful today of where I am, and I almost think of religion as just a tool to help stay in touch with God. It’s a tool to Spirituality, but it’s not the only answer, like going to Church on Sundays and listening to certain podcasts. Like, for example, there’s a Dave Ramsey podcast that I like to listen to. He has a great podcast and a lot of followers. The day of Ramsey podcast is a tool that helps me get out of debt or is helping me get out of debt. But it’s not the solution to the problem. It is merely a tool. The solution to getting out of debt and to have solvency with my finances is working the twelve steps in a twelve step program like Debtors Anonymous where I can fix the problem, which is the heart. I can fix the soul. Just using a certain tool like a Dave Ramsey podcast or a Dave Ramsey app on your phone to track expenses is not going to help keep me solvent. Something’s going to happen. Some kind of bottom is going to happen where I’m going to have the need to spend or borrow money. That craving to do those things will happen if I have not worked the steps and surrender it to my Higher Power and fix those wrongs in the past. So I hope that helps to clarify things. It’s like you can take Antabus, I think is the name to stop drinking. You can switch to beer, you can switch to wine. You can try to cut it out for a little bit of time to see if you’re an alcoholic or not. All those are just like tools. But until somebody works the twelve steps and until somebody surrenders to their Higher Power and ask for help, those tools might work for a little while. But we have what’s called a relapse. Sure enough, when I’m grateful that I have not had a relapse today in alcohol, I have had relapses. When it comes to spending and the Debtors Anonymous program and the program for lusting. I’ve had some relapses in my last two and a half years with those programs, but I quickly was able to get back on track. And I learned from those things. But I’m just going to try to wrap it up by saying, don’t put your Higher Power in the same box with the Higher Power that you grew up with. Find your Higher Power. Find the Higher Power that you can agree with. Day one of trying to stay sober. There are many people that just believe that a (G.O.D.) Group Of Drunks, as we kind of jokingly call ourselves a Group Of Drunks trying to stay sober together as a group is a Higher Power. To me, that’s a phenomenal concept. So just thinking of this group of twelve or 20 people that are all trying to stay sober and sharing their experience, strength, and hope. If you just look at that as a Higher Power to start with, just do that for today. Relying on that Higher Power to help you get through the next 24 hours might be all it takes that might be all that it takes to help you stay sober for the next 24 hours. It doesn’t have to be this big formal. It doesn’t have to be very formal. It could just be I have one older man. He’s about 75 years old in the program and his Higher Power is Mother Earth. He likes to look at his Higher Power as more of a maternal motherly type of figure as opposed to and I say figure loosely. I’m just talking about the concept of more like a mother than a father figure and I don’t know his background or his history there with his father. Maybe there was issues with that. It doesn’t matter. Nobody is trying to correct him. Nobody’s trying to correct me on my version of my Higher Power. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a wonderful day. It is Friday morning and it’s a beautiful Friday morning. I’m so grateful to be alive I’m so grateful to be able to share this with you guys. I hope you have a wonderful day and make your contribution. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend. Share it with somebody that’s struggling. Share it with somebody that doesn’t understand or doesn’t have a Higher Power. Maybe they might find one. Hit subscribe if you liked it. I hope you have a wonderful day. Make a contribution! Bye.