Good morning, Path The Warren Podcast this is Episode 13. It is July 13, 2020 on a beautiful Monday morning, and I’m so glad everyone’s with us this morning. I look forward to discussing a topic that is very dear to my heart. I want to talk about this morning “Bottom Lines”. What are bottom lines and recovery and which ones do I use and which ones have I decided to put into place today? And just a little bit about where they came from. I didn’t believe in the bottom lines at first. I didn’t know what they were. I thought that it was a way of people basically creating their own rules and doing things that they wanted to do in recovery, as opposed to following the guidelines set in place by the group as a whole. But what I quickly learned is that they’re very custom. Everybody has different things that they need to work on at different times in their recovery, and these things might need to change as you’re going through and learning more about yourself. The example often talked about in the rooms of recovery is that this whole self evaluation, working on myself situation is like peeling away levels of an onion. You got the outer part and then you get into more and more. Every time you peel a layer back on this onion, you start to realize there’s another area that you can work on that you need to work on. At least that’s been my experience. Once I got sober from alcohol and drugs and got off of all prescription mind altering drugs, I realized that I was having an issue with lust. I realized that lust was definitely an issue that I needed to work on. So I was recommended to a group, and it’s twelve step program that really focuses only on it’s more of a men’s version. That was a call that I would get on every day at 04:00. That was meant to help people get sober from having sex with self. Basically people that are struggling with porn or struggling with masturbation or struggling with looking at things that are not appropriate. As far as other humans lusting after other people. This program was really meant to help people with that, and it was called SA, Sexaholics Anonymous. And I went to that for a little bit as far as on the phone meetings, but I found that they didn’t believe in homosexuality. They thought that was just a sin and just a they thought that that was like a fetish. And the crazy part about it is my accountability partner and other people that I talked to didn’t feel that way, and I didn’t feel that way either. I didn’t feel like it was just a fetish. I believe that love is love. And so I had a hard time with that group, and there was this other group over here that I had heard about. It was called SLAA, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. So they had the love piece in there. So I’d been hearing about this group, and they were more tolerant of the definition of love. But one thing that this group had that the first group did not is that SLAA had these “bottom lines”. They had top lines, they had caution lines, and then they had goal lines. I really, really connected with this set of tools. That’s the best way to describe them as tools. So what are the four categories of lines and why are they important? Well, at first I was resistant upon the whole theory of creating bottom lines and top lines. I did not think that was the way to go. I thought that, oh, well, that’s weird. Some people have masturbation as a bottom line and some people don’t. I thought that was quite awkward. Awkward is not quite the word. I thought that was not the way it should be. I knew that I wanted to stop having sex with self, but I didn’t know if this program would help it, if this program was going to support it, because some people did and some people didn’t have it on their bottom lines. So as I was reading the handouts and the definitions of these tools, I really embraced them, and I thought they were very helpful. So let’s talk about them. It’s just like driving a car. You have goal lines. So where are you trying to go? What’s the goal in recovery? My goal line is to be happy, joyous, and free. I want to be able to not have to have sex with self, want to not have to cope with alcohol or drugs. Goal lines are to be in a happy marriage with a daughter that is healthy and loves me. What’s the goal? That’s my goal. Those are my goals. Some of them is to have a job where I have a purpose that jives with my purpose. The goal is to be able to support my family and create wealth. All those are part of my goal lines. But then there are bottom line behavior, and there’s top line behavior. So top line behavior, top line behavior are things like prayer, meditation, talking to other people. In recovery, top line behavior is to work the hours. If I’m supposed to work 45 hours a week, top line behavior is working 45 hours a week or even 50 hours a week, top line behavior would not be working 35 hours a week if I’m supposed to be working 45. So Topline behavior is kind of the things that have to be done in order to get to those goal lines. All the things that they talk about in recovery: working steps, communicating with a sponsor, possibly even working with an accountability partner. Those are all top line behaviors. Caution line behaviors are in between things that are bottom and top line behaviors. So I’ll get to that one in a little bit. But let’s talk about bottom line I’ve got about seven to nine things I believe right now that are on my bottom line behavior list, and it kind of covers the gamut of my behavior. But these are often tweaked when I realize I have an issue with something I’ll add or take away, depending on where I stand and what I need to focus on at that week or that month. Again, I can’t stress how much these bottom line behaviors have helped me. So here we go. My bottom lines are no sexual intrigue, no porn of any kind, no sex outside of marriage, no sex with self, no social media stalking, no obvious sugars are cake, candy or ice cream. And I also added pizza to that pizza for now. And again, it’s not forever. It’s just for today. That goes with all the bottom lines. So no addaboys for mom or dad, and no obsessive thinking about a person in my life that I’ve had resentments toward since childhood. So I’m going to leave that right where it is for now. But all of these are things that I could talk an entire podcast or for on individually. But let me just explain a couple of them so that you have an idea of what I’m talking about here. So why don’t I start with the obvious sugars? I had gotten sober and my weight fluctuated 40 pounds heavier. Like I got 40 pounds larger. And then I got 40 pounds skinnier. And I realized that I had an eating disorder. When it came to obvious sugars, I would eat the entire carton of ice cream within 24 hours period, sit me down with a box of pizza, and I’d find a way to finish the whole pizza. Candy bars, You’d be surprised what I would do for a Snickers. So it really all came to a head though, when I was with my daughter at a birthday party for one of her friends and her little friend June had a birthday party at one of the local trampoline parks. Since it wasn’t a huge group of kids, my mom had gotten a small cake. It was like maybe a 14 inch cake, a small three inch tall ice cream cake. And it was not just a regular old ice cream. It was actually Oreo. It was Oreo ice cream cake. And all the kids got together about halfway through the halfway through our session at the trampoline park. We had a two hour block of window block of time there and halfway through, they called all the kids together and had them sit on the table or two. And the mom served this Oreo ice cream cake. I got my piece. Of course. She asked the parents if they wanted a piece or not, and some said yes, some said no, I said yes, and I was sober. I just wanted to clarify, this was a Saturday afternoon and I’d been sobered out for about a year from alcohol and drugs. So I get this piece of cake and I’m enjoying it. I mean, it is so good. Ice cream is a little bit soft. The Oreos are inside of it. My daughter’s sitting across from me. She’s eating her piece. She’s got her friend next to her. Well, after a few minutes, my daughter had finished half of her piece. I had, of course, finished mine well before that. But her and her friend said, let’s go play. Let’s go play. So they take off and they’re running and playing at the trampoline park. And I’m just sitting there, left by myself, because all the kids have run off, just left there looking at my daughter’s half eaten cake, knowing that she’s not going to come back and eat the rest of it. I started eating Maddie’s cake, and it wasn’t long before I was staring at the friend’s cake. So not only had I finished my piece, which was a hefty piece, but I devoured my daughter’s cake that she had left. And then I was working on her friend’s cake, the birthday girl’s cake. That’s when I caught myself. And I said, oh, my gosh, what am I doing? I could not NOT let that cake go to waste. I could not sit there and just let it melt. Just like I couldn’t sit there and let a beer get hot on a bar and someone left behind or a glass of wine that somebody didn’t finish it, I’d finish it. I was not going to let it go to waste. And the whole mindset is this thing called, like, The Why Not Syndrome. That’s what I call it. The why not syndrome. Why not have a huge Mimosa in the car on the way to visit somebody on a Saturday morning? Why not drink three bourbons when you get home from work? Why not finish this ice cream cake with Oreos in it that’s halfway melted so it doesn’t go to waste? Why not? And I think the answer is because I didn’t have any bottom lines. I had no rules in my life that were there to help me. So I picked up this book that I ordered called Overeaters Anonymous, because I felt like I had an issue with this ice cream cake. And as I read in that, I realized that obvious sugars is the issue. And the reason why we call it obvious sugars instead of just regular any kind of sugar is because if the sugar is listed in the first five ingredients, then that means that it’s an obvious part of the recipe. There are some things that have a little bit of sugar in them that’s not an obvious sugar item. Like there are some dressings where they put a little bit of sugar in them. That’s different. Cake, candy, and ice cream are the three. For me, this is just my experience. So if I can limit it’s not even limited. It’s abstaining. If I can abstain just for today from cake, candy, or ice cream, then I believe that I have accomplished and not crossed over. The bottom line, if you know how an alcoholic is anonymous, if you know how when somebody relapses and picks up a drink and they want to work on sobriety again, they pick up a white chip. The white chip is a sign of surrender. Well, the bottom lines are the same sort of the same sort of idea. You have successfully stayed sober. You have successfully abstained from the item if you didn’t do it for that 24 hours. So, for example, I know that I’ve eaten the way that I want to eat, and I know that I’ve done the right thing mentally. When at the end of the day, even though I might have eaten some potato chips or might have eaten a little bit of, I don’t know, I’m trying to think of an example bruschetta on some bread, or I might have eaten a bite of macaroni and cheese or some baked beans that I swore I’m going to try to cut out, even though it might have been like, for example, deviled eggs is a great example. Deviled eggs. When I go to mom’s house and she makes these amazing deviled eggs, those are not on my bottom line. I don’t have a problem with devil eggs. And if I have three or five while I’m there, yeah, it’s a little absurd to have that many. But I don’t have an issue with deviled eggs or bruschetta or macaroni and cheese or baked beans. My issue is when I start eating ice cream, when I start eating Snickers bars, when I start eating a Baby Ruths candy, any kind of candy, when I start those, there is no stopping there’s no limiting how much intake. There’s no quality control on, hey, I’m just going to eat the good parts. I’ll eat all of them. So that’s a little bit about the obvious sugars part. And then the pizza. I added the pizza. My family and I used to love to go to Dano’s pizza. Dano’s is right down the road we would get this Buffalo chicken pizza and I’d get extra hot sauce and an extra little cup of their homemade ranch that will make your mouth water. I used to not think I had a problem with pizza, but one night I found myself even though I had already eaten half of our large Buffalo pizza, my daughter had some on her plate. She wasn’t eating. And then my wife had an extra piece on her plate. I couldn’t leave that extra pizza on the plates. And I’m like, what am I doing? I’m full. I’ve had so much here. I’ve eaten so much that I cannot understand why I think it’s a good idea to gorge myself and eat the rest of everybody’s pizzas on their plates. No concept of a to go box. Why would I want to put them in a to go box? It’s the same thing that I have with ice cream. Why would I want to leave this for later? Why would I want to put the top back on and put it back in the freezer? After about two months of having the bottom lines in place, for obvious sugars, I decided I needed to add pizza to it. And I’m so glad I did. I’m so glad. One of the things that I noticed is a good indicator that tells me, hey, you should consider adding this to a bottom line. One of the indicators that I’ve realized is if I have the guilt, shame and remorse the next day or later that afternoon. So not only do I have a stomach ache because I ate a ton of hot sauce ranch dressing on the pizza, but I had eight pieces, six pieces, however many it was. Not only did my stomach hurt from it, but I felt the pain from eating all those carbs, but I didn’t want to work out. I didn’t want to do much besides sit on the couch because I had all this guilt from eating all that. I felt horrible. I didn’t have the middle state now to get up and do stuff. So it’s like once you have this guilt, shame and remorse start, once you start down that process for that mindset, then the other things start to slip. Going to the gym, getting up early the next morning to go work out. So the physical starts to slip. And then you get into this mindset of I don’t want to do my money, I don’t want to do the numbers. So I start to fall on this Debtors Anonymous program. And then I don’t feel like reaching out and calling somebody in the program to work with them. It’s just this downward spiral that I found. And that might sound extreme explaining what happens when I eat it by the pizza, but step back and don’t do it for a while. And when it happens, all of a sudden I start to see the chain reaction. It’s quite apparent what happens. So that is one example of bottom line. Another one is social media stalking. So I’ve spoken to this a little bit in a previous podcast. But what I found, what happened when I got on social media for work is that all of a sudden I see somebody that I haven’t seen in a while on social media, or I see a new person, I’ll see somebody that’s a beautiful guy or girl and I’ll click on it and all of a sudden I’m in their profile and then I’m scrolling down to see if there’s an attractive picture of them in their social media and then I’ll click on that. And it’s not just a factor of how much time I’m wasting. There’s obviously that issue of the amount of time that’s unnecessarily wasted with social media stalking, but it’s just not healthy. And many times it affects my sexual sobriety. And I could talk some more to that but I have no business being on an attractive girl or guys page, scrolling up and down looking for pictures when they have their shirt off or looking for pictures of them on the beach. I have no business. My mind is not where I’m supposed to be if I’m doing those things. Many times when I was scrolling up and down the feed, when I was going up and down the feed of the social media site, say, like for Facebook or Instagram, I was looking for a trigger. My mind was subconsciously searching for a trigger to click on. And then I was off to the races. It’s like I’m in this other land looking at somebody that I shouldn’t have even been looking at in the first place. Notice that my bottom lines are very specific. It’s not “Don’t ever look at social media again.” It’s: No Social media is stalking. So even if I happen to jump on, click on something, or click on somebody and I catch myself starting the process of stalking, I can stop and go back. I can stop and say, that probably be breaking the bottom line if I went any further. So I can go back. It’s the same with obvious sugars. It’s not saying I can’t ever have anything ever that has any trace of sugar in it. No, it’s saying if it’s just dripping sugar and has obviously got refined sugars in it, I need to check that, for example, eating a bunch of strawberries or grapes or sweet potatoes has a lot of sugar in it, but it’s not refined sugar. There’s a difference in fruits and vegetables that have sugars and this ice cream cake that’s melting with dairy and sugar. There’s an obvious part of the obvious. Eating candy, Jolly Ranchers, Fireballs, Baby Ruths. Those are obvious sugars. So it’s a lot easier for me to say, okay, well, if I just stay out of these three categories for sugars, then I’m good. It’s not saying all carbs. No. It’s saying no pizza. So if I’m at a restaurant and I want to get some chicken Alfredo on a random night where I feel like going crazy, having a little carbplooza or something, eating a bunch of carbs, I can do that. I’m not crossing my bottom line. It’s very specific with pizza, social media stalking, obvious sugars, porn of any kind. Let’s talk about that for 2 seconds. So I believe that over the years, I used to collect them and have them on standby. My wife and I would even look at them at times together after we got married. And I think a lot of this started in the early parts of my life. I realized when I got sober that this whole topic was a real underlying issue. It was an underlying issue. I was telling myself this, how am I going to be spiritual, do a quiet time, try to do the things of this program in terms of alcohol, trying to work the steps. How in the world am I going to do this? And then just before work justify going to the bathroom and looking up porn on my phone? It just didn’t make sense. I caught myself several mornings doing that and I was like, Wait a minute. So what would happen would be the guilt, shame, and remorse after the whole sex with self, it would be this guilt, shame, remorse. The exact same things they talk about with alcohol. When an alcoholic realizes he’s an alcoholic and he goes to these programs and starts to work on himself and then relapses, well, the whole issue is he’s now got a mind full of AA and a belly full of booze. It creates guilt, shame, and remorse. Those are the three words they use repeatedly. So here I am trying to improve myself spiritually. Every morning with prayer, meditation. I’m working the steps. I’m making progress. And then I found myself one morning in the bathroom looking at Twitter, just catching up on Twitter. And all of a sudden I saw this little video and I’ve mentioned this before in a podcast. It was a guy having sex with self and I couldn’t turn away. It was like I was hooked to it. I had to watch it. And then it caused me to go look at this other girl. And before I knew it, I was jumping off of that and going into a porn site on my phone. And I didn’t really want to do it. It’s like I didn’t sign up for that. It’s like I didn’t sign up for a prescription Ziploc bag full of prescriptions. I didn’t sign up for $330,000 in debt either. But the little things that I was doing daily caused me to get there. So what I needed to do was I needed to work on these little things in life. And the bottom line was the perfect tool. Establishing bottom lines made all other things fall into place. Saying that I wasn’t going to look at any porn today, just for today. I don’t know where or how else to explain it. It made it work. It made me not have that guilt, shame, and remorse that would cause me to fall off of my eating or fall off of my spending program. And what would happen is if I fell off of my eating program, if I fell off of my sexual addiction program, if I fell off of my money program where I’m spending and debting. If I were to fall off of those three things, how long do you think it’ll take me before I’m looking for an alcohol drink? I’m looking for booze or I’m looking for a bag of pot? They won’t take too long. You get enough of those main programs out of line, and all of a sudden the entire thing falls down and falls apart when I start drinking again. So those are just a few of the bottom lines that I’ve really had to put into place and I could talk about the other ones, too. So we’ve talked about the food we’ve talked about no porn of any kind, no sex with self so the definition I’ve had there is if I and this is the definition that I put into place if I have to if I find that I have the need to go and take care of business on my own what happens is there’s this dishonest thing happening. I’m not being honest with my wife and that doesn’t mean that one night when she doesn’t want to have sex that I can’t touch myself and have her help me that doesn’t mean that because that means she’s involved. She knows about it. The problem that was occurring was I would find myself sneaking around having sex with myself like I was having an affair or like I was being dishonest and sneaking around doing it when I didn’t want her to know about it. I didn’t want anybody to know about it. What does that create? That creates this whole dishonest mindset this whole sneakiness I found myself sneaking around just like I was doing when I was drinking or drugging there was no difference in the mindset that I had when I was trying to sneak out of the house and go behind the shed and smoke a bowl of weed or sneak a bourbon in the car on the way to Lowes pour a strong drink on the way to Lowes or there was no difference it was the same dishonest. It was the same mindset of oh I can sneak this one through I can get away with this that whole dishonest behavior it rocks my world today. I’m really trying and that’s the thing I really am trying to be honest I really want to be honest with my wife. I really want to be honest with my accountability partner. With my sponsor, with my boss. With my wife a pause that’s the goal. So if my wife is in the room if my wife is with me and for some reason she doesn’t want to have sex or she’s not up for it that night but she’s willing to help me get mine that’s okay.
