The 12 Steps and Emotional Sobriety Recovery 2.0 Interviews Herbert Kaighan

Transcription

1 The 12 Steps and Emotional Sobriety Recovery 2.0 Interviews Herbert Kaighan [Music playing] Tommy: Welcome to the Recovery 2.0 Beyond Addiction Conference. I m your host, Tommy Rosen, and today I am so pleased to be speaking with Herb Kaighan. Herb has been in continuous recovery from alcoholism since 1984 and for the past 25 years has been involved in carrying the message of recovery through spiritual awakening through his beloved presentations, workshops and retreats. Herb is the author of the 12 Step Guide to using the Alcoholic Anonymous Big Book and also 12 Steps to Spiritual Awakening Enlightenment for Everyone. He is also an adjunct professor at St. John s seminary in Camarillo, California where he teaches a full semester course on 12 Steps Spirituality to their theologians. Herb, thank you so much for lending your voice, your important voice to the Recovery 2.0 Conference. Welcome. Herbert: Well, thank you, Tommy. I m excited. It s a pleasure to have met you recently and to be online in this conversation. Tommy: Yes. Well, fantastic. This is a particularly well, this is going to be a cherish interview for me because we re going to be talking about one of my favorite topics which is 12 step recovery, 12 step spirituality, this wonderful path that we have the good fortune of stumbling upon. Lately in the press, I had been reading a lot of negative things about 12- step recovery, about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and about the rehab landscape in general. And what I m finding almost across the board all of these negative voices, they re not offering up any kind of alternative. All they re doing is saying, Hey, we ve got a big problem with addiction and alcoholism in our country and the system that we seemed to have adopted as a society, this 12 step system, doesn t seem to be working. And it s such an unfortunate misconception that I wanted to start right there and really make it clear for people what the 12 steps have to offer. And perhaps later on, we ll get in to what they don t offer. Herbert: Great. Tommy: Let s take a look. So first of all, how did you come to find yourself as someone who was following the 12- step path? 1

2 Herbert: You indicated you found me and of course, I could go on for hours about my path but in the short time that we have, my wife went in to recovery in a hospital setting and I came to support her. They asked me to take a look at my drinking, can you imagine? And when I did, I found for the first time I was 43 years old that I had a problem with alcohol. I had never seen it as a problem. I was never able to connect the dots and that s part of the nature of the alcoholic issue. And so I was willing to do the writing that they asked me to do and that is write out your history with your drinking, not your biological, not your emotional, not your psychological no, no, no your drinking history. It s the first time I ve ever and I spent 30 minutes doing that and in 30 minutes, what was revealed is that I had a problem and that there was a pattern. They said immediately, Why don t you go try a 12 step meeting? and I did. I was willing. So there s the key for me, that one word. I was willing to support my wife s recovery. I was willing to hear the question that they ask me and then take the action that they ask me to take and then I was willing to take the action once the question had been somewhat answered and the rest is history. Although I was in AA for five years with a sponsor going to meetings everyday and I was not changed. There s the key now I think to how you originally started our discussion concerning the negative press because there s some disconnect in the culture of 12 step from what 12 step really is all about and therefore people aren t finding the transformation that was the original intent of Bill Wilson who got it originally from the Oxford group. It was about conversion. It was about transformation. It was about change in the way you think and feel and behave through a process, a methodology that the Oxford group had and Bill experienced, that he adopted and then adapted to his 12 steps. Tommy: Yes. Well, I m interested in so you ve touched on a lot of different, things, the Oxford groups, people might not be familiar with. We should just define that for people. Also this idea of spiritual awakening and that you have not been transformed after five years. Tommy: That would be a point of concern for many people who are thinking maybe in early recovery, they re like, My God, does that mean that I have to go through five years of going to meetings everyday and I won t be transformed either? Is that what s ahead of me? So let s look at that question first because I know that would be a concern for some people. Herbert: I m so glad you asked it and it s very relevant and the answer is no, you don t necessarily have to wait five years. My experience though now and it s pretty vast since I have 30 years and I have worked with a lot of people through my retreats and my workshops is that between four and six years sometime, there s a falling out that is pretty dramatic where people get to a new level of consciousness. If however you have 2

3 the good fortune of coming in to a 12- step program and finding an experienced sponsor who in fact themselves have been transformed, you will probably have an experience earlier than I did. I happen to have a sponsor who was unusual man in terms of uncommon common sense and a mature man but he didn t know much about the Big Book or the step process and so he shared with me what had been shared with him, which was not sufficient. And I heard a man share in a meeting at about five years in a way a vocabulary and in a manner that revealed that he had had some kind of an experience that I had never heard about. And I ve been going to a meeting everyday and so I spent an hour with him after the meeting and he explained what he had done that is going through the steps precisely as they re indicated in the Big Book with the guidance of somebody else who had had that experience and was transformed and I said, Would you help me? and he said yes. Tommy: Yes. Now, now, what you re describing is incredibly attractive to me. Herbert: Yes. Tommy: I ve had that experience as well and when I feel it, I get around it. When I get around somebody who s on that path that has had that experience, immediately, it s like a magnet. Herbert: Yes. Tommy: I m like wow, that is what I ve been looking for. Herbert: That s correct. Tommy: And you re saying then that working with 12 steps in the way that you do it and have done it and the way this gentleman showed you how to do it will lead to that spiritual awakening for everybody. Is it some people? Is anyone exempt from this process? Herbert: No one is exempt if you re human and you re capable of thinking and taking action which pretty much is everybody unless you re biologically or mentally deficient in such a way that you can t in fact think accurately or take action that s appropriate. So in fact, my first book is a guidebook that incorporates the instructions that I received from this man and three other men over a 10- year period. It s an amalgam of those instructions because each person has a nuance that in fact gave me a new experience and my second book, its subtitle is Enlightenment for Everyone. And in fact, the big book in the first paragraph of the very first printing ends the paragraph by saying, Our way of living may have its advantages for all. Bill had this intuition that yes, he had a solution for alcoholics but in fact, the problem is not alcohol. He s really clear in the Big 3

4 Book, it s not alcohol. The problem is a spiritual malady, a cancer of the soul, which is the human condition. Tommy: Yes. Thank you so much. So going to back to the original discussion about some of the bad press we ve had lately Tommy: if somebody let s say you re a man of science or you re a person who needs scientific corroboration in order to have faith in something Herbert: Yes. Tommy: And you hear about what we re discussing about right now and you hear this is a process of spiritual discovery that may take a while for a person to make that connection but once they make that connection it s a beautiful thing and there s a real sense of transformation and transcendence, a person like that you know is going to have this, I think people have this misunderstanding that I m going to come in to this program. I m going to go to some meetings. I m going to work the steps with a sponsor and when I get through those steps, I m going to be better. I m going to be better. I m going to be cured from this thing that has been bothering me my whole life. And I think if that s the bar that you re holding, that s the idea that you re holding for what s going to happen, I think you re going to be disappointed. I think this is why people fall off because the premise of it is not explained right. Tommy: Does that make any sense? Herbert: There s a part of ignorance in the rooms of 12 steps, a lot of ignorance. That s a not a judgment. That s an observation of the lack of information or the misunderstanding of the information that s available. Tommy: Yeah. Herbert: And that s why I do the work that I do with the passion that I do. I spend entirely my conscious waking hours trying to give people a perspective on the information and give them, introduce them to the experience of transformation and that s the problem, there s the negative press. Although if you take a look at 80 years of experience and AA has been around for about 80 years, and [you want to add it in space] it s the only thing that really has a high probability of working the unfortunate part is that the first of all we can t track it in any scientific way in terms of outcomes but 4

5 in sort of [wet finger] in the wind estimate, we probably have 20, 30, 40, 50 percent long term recovery whatever it is, it s not good enough that it s better than it was before Tommy: Right. Right. Of course. Now, let s step back for a moment to some of the history here. What were the Oxford groups and how did they play in to the development of the 12 steps? Herbert: Frank Buchman was a Lutheran minister and he s sitting around with his congregation their leadership and he s saying, Hey guys, this isn t working. So what can we do? This is in the 20s and they re in prayer and they re in meditation and they re in discussion really trying to in fact figure out about transformation, having lives that are in fact in harmony with the ideals of Christianity and they know that it s not working what they re doing and they said, Well, let s see, well, let s see, what was it like in the first 50 years after Jesus died? Well, they sat in people s homes because there were no churches. They didn t have any hierarchy because there were no priests and organization. They read scripture. Oh yeah, by the way, there was no Christian scripture because it hadn t been written yet so they were focused on the Hebrew scripture and they meditated and they asked for guidance in meditation and then they shared it and after sharing it, they said, Let s help our community. And they look at each other and said, Well let s do that. And as they did that, they created a process with six steps. In a longer history than we want to get in to here, Bill Wilson was introduced to the Oxford Group before he ever got sober and he went to those meetings and was hospitalized for the third time in 1935 December and he had begun to be aware that those step process might be effective for him and on page 13 in the Big Book, it describes his application of the steps while in the second day of hospitalization. And on page 14 in that same story, his story in the Big Book, it describes his mountain top mystical experience. I mean he s two days sober. He s detoxing. He s still shaking. He s still almost potentially delirium [tremors] and he has mystical mountain top experience lasted 20 minutes and at the end of that, he intuitively knew his alcohol problem had been removed and his life s mission and destiny was carry that message to other people. So the Oxford and he separated from the Oxford group in 1937 because they were focused on evangelization and a religious orientation and he knew that his purpose was to work with drugs. And so then he wrote the Big Book in 38, published it in 39. At that time, his co- founder Dr. Bob separated also from the Oxford group. The interesting part of that story, the back- story there is Dr. Bob had been in the Oxford group for two and a half years before he ever met Bill. So he s going to meetings every week, he s praying, he s meditating, he s sharing and he s going home every week and getting drunk. Then Bill meets him in June of 1935, explains to him what Dr. Silkworth had explained to him which was that you have a physical allergy and a mental condition that allows you or forces you to have an obsession and that you re powerless. It s not will power. It s not knowledge. It s not brainpower, it s not effort, it s not what you 5

6 want, it s not what you feel. You re powerless over it. And as soon as Dr. Bob who is a surgeon, he s a medical doctor... Tommy: Yes. Herbert: And for two and a half years he s been hearing the message but he didn t know what the problem was. So Bill comes in and tells him what the problem is and the message made sense and he was able to get it. And going back to even our original discussion at the beginning of this conference does answer the question people don t know that they re sitting in the middle of the solution and what it takes to apply the solution. It s like what TK Chester had said about Christianity, Christianity hasn t been tried and failed. Christianity has not been tried. The 12 steps have not been tried and failed; they haven t been applied and tried. Tommy: Right. Right. It s a perennial discussion that goes on between people, something like Yeah, the 12 steps didn t work for me, and if you dig a little deeper, you realize the people didn t actually worked the 12 steps. Herbert: Exactly because there are 12, you know. Tommy: There are 12. Herbert: That s right. It s not just going to meetings and going the fourth step and fifth step. Yeah. And I bet you over half of the people in 12 step recovery have not done their amends or completed them. Tommy: That s right. That s right. Well, so the Oxford groups were decidedly a Christian leaning or a Christian organization. Herbert: Absolutely. It was Christian, started by a Lutheran minister and then picked up by the Episcopalians. Tommy: But Bill saw that alcohol and addiction in general does not discriminate one religion versus another. He saw that this was a problem that affected all of humanity and the solution was going to have to apply to all of humanity. Is that true of the 12 steps? It s open to anyone? Herbert: It s open to anyone. It s open to everyone. And Evie Thatcher [SP] who brought the message of the Oxford group to Bill gave us the key to that and it s almost unbelievable when Bill said, How did you get sober? and Evie said, I got religion, and then Bill says, Certainly not that. You re brighter than that, and Evie said, yeah, right, Evie said, Relax, Bill. Choose your own concept. Now that s in the Big Book and I ve 6

7 often wondered he came from the Oxford group, how could he ever have said that? And yet I heard an interview with him on tape where he was asked that question, that very question, Where did you get that response? He said, I got it from the Oxford group, that that was their orientation. They have a very broad inclusive, welcoming attitude toward people who formed their own concept that didn t need to be a Christian concept, which blew me away. Tommy: So wonderful. Thank you for that, Herb. So as I think about this idea of spiritual awakening, it begs a few questions, which I know people sort of myself and others have asked over the years, what we are waking up to? Tommy: What is required to have such an awakening and if we have this awakening, is the awakening required in order for us to be rid of our cravings for drugs and alcohol or are there stages of an awakening? How does that work? Herbert: I use a mental image of falling out for the first five years, I thought out externally in the rooms of AA. Then when I was ready to hear a man share about an experience of transformation, I heard it at five years and I went through a process that took a year of going through the steps 1 through 12 and I thought out internally. And the Big Book defines it as simply as I think it can be defined as spiritual awakening. It s not a feeling. It s not a hot flush like Bill had that mystical mountaintop overwhelmed with the sense of the presence of God. That s a spiritual experience. People have that with or without the methodology of 12 steps, with or without the methodology of organized religion or therapy or drugs. Lots of people have had it in lots of different ways. But the Big Book defines it for Bill because he wanted to make a distinction between that mystical mountain top experience and what the majority of us have which is that slow educational variety and he defines it as a change, a change in the way we think and feel and behave and it s done to us not by us. This is not self- help. Although I m actually coming to a more inclusive vocabulary where I could see that we don t have to introduce the word higher power or spirituality, those are the words in the Big Book, those are the words in the steps but this is a very human process and a very specific methodology that will take you there if you believe you re in a context where there s something bigger than you. Tommy: Incredible. All right. We re going to have to get in to this. So this idea, every time I sit in a meeting for the last 23 years or 24 years, I look up at the wall and I see these steps 7

8 Tommy: And they re written out on the wall and I see the traditions but I focus in on the steps mostly and even today, and I ve worked through the steps many many times, they re a foundational element of my life. Tommy: They re still daunting and intimidating to me as they sit on the wall to this day. Tommy: To this day, I still feel like I almost like codependent responses come out of me for the newcomer in the room who might be looking up at the wall and I m like, oh God, what are they thinking when they see those steps? It seems so intense, so daunting. Tommy: And yet, what I m hearing from you and what my experience has been is that over time with work and with open mindedness and willingness, the meaning of those words reveals itself to people in individual ways that may actually be different from one person to the next. But this idea of God and higher power, or God and where God shows up in the steps a number of times, so if you have a problem with God or you ve had a problem with religion, or you ve had resentment in those areas, you look up on the wall and you might be thinking, My God, I can t believe I ve ended up here. How am I going to get through these steps when I ve got this issue? And what I m hearing you say now is it may be possible that someone doesn t have to believe in God to have the benefit of his steps off of. Herbert: Absolutely. And I think that s the benefit of some of the other programs that use the 12 steps that have come and heard the 12 steps within the human framework and it s still works. If in fact you believe in the group and Bill Wilson suggested that in the 12 and 12 in step 2, he said, If you can t digest the concept of G- O- D, why don t you use the group as your higher power for right now? And Bill was very comfortable with that question that you just asked about shouldn t we be a little more tempted about presenting God and he said, You know what, if God chases them out of the John Barleycorn [SP] will chase them back. And you ve heard it in the meetings, you ve been to enough meetings. People have a lot of resistance to the entire possibility that it might be some type of alternative organized religion or cult and they have some problems. In fact, when you have the desperation that there is no other solution that you ve tried organized religion, you ve tried therapy, you ve tried self help, you ve tried medication and etc. and you re offered this, that you hear witness all the time that it works on a regular basis, maybe you re going to be willing enough to try it and you said, What does it take? It takes suffering. It just takes suffering. I did not even probably 8

9 have an open heart or mind to it until I found myself thought out sufficiently that I became aware of how deeply I was suffering and how distorted my relationships and the quality of my life was. Tommy: Yes. And that probably extends out in to the world to people who are not necessarily drunks, alcoholics or addicts, people who are subject to the human condition, which is everybody. And as I look out in the world and I just traveled across it, people are hurting out there. Tommy: And a lot of them are trying to deal with their [halts] by using drugs and alcohol or other addictive behaviors. Other people are just in pain. And so from a Buddhist perspective if you will, the Buddha said, Life is suffering. It s difficult to be a human being. Tommy: So it seems like all you have to do is to be human and to be awake enough to realize that like wow, there s a lot of suffering out in the world, you could then apply these steps to a life from any perspective and they could work. And so another mental image I have is a dimmer switch. I came in at a very low level of light because of drugs and alcohol. And as I sat in the rooms and thought out, detox physically and emotionally, and got some therapy to support all of that beginning recovery and all the deep wounds and the pain that family of origin and all the chaos that I had created myself, then the dimmer switch went up a notch at a time and there was more light. But it was only when I did the steps and the interesting part of is I ve become very worried that the 12 step is spiritual awakening. That s not a throw away [word]. It means I was asleep. That means I was living in darkness. I didn t know that I didn t know. I couldn t see that I didn t see until in fact the dimmer switch went up a notch at a time based on my willingness and my cooperation with grace at a time. Little actions incrementally turned that dimmer switch up a notch at a time and then there was enough light for me to begin this process and as I completed the process, I wasn t aware that anything was happening. It was a full year that I was immersed in this full immersion effort at working the steps and completing the step 9 and I was not aware that anything was happening. But after I had completed it and I was in the practice of my meditation and my 12 step and I look back over my shoulder, I could see now how I didn t see. And I began to know how I didn t know and I saw the transformation that had taken place in retrospect. And that dimmer switch is on an infinite swivel it can go forward if I lean in to it but if I relax, it will go backward. 9

10 Tommy: A lot of people who sort of approached the 12 steps and really for the first time are thinking often the thought is All right, so I have a problem with alcohol, you know, or I have a problem with drugs, or I have a problem with some addictive behavior, all I have to do is stop that behavior ad everything is going to be just fine. Herbert: That is correct. Tommy: Well, it is and sort of there s an element of what you re saying where it isn t which is there s a bigger problem. Herbert: Oh yes. I see what you re saying. Yes. Absolutely. Tommy: Yeah. There s a more Herbert: I mean if they just stop, their life is going to get better. Tommy: Sure. Herbert: But the question is, can they stop? Tommy: Right. Herbert: That s the key question is to whether you re an alcoholic or not. Once you stop, can you stay stop? Tommy: Right. Herbert: Or will you start again with some rationalization. Tommy: Right. Right. Well, I m looking at my own personal experience and I just came to this program absolutely kicking and screaming. Tommy: And I really tried to find another way. Tommy: And the things that people were telling me I found it so difficult to believe, you know, learning about alcoholism, learning about addiction, learning about these steps and just the idea that I was somehow going to adapt these pathway now in to my life, I was like, Why would I do that? 10

11 Herbert: You re right. Tommy: Why would I do that? Why can t I just stop doing the bad behaviors I ve been doing that have obviously brought negative consequences? Why can t I just stop that and why do I have to engage in this whole spiritual path? It s so weird is what I thought at the beginning. Tommy: And what I came to understand is as you re so eloquently putting it is I didn t know how disconnected I was from my own heart. Herbert: That s it. Tommy: I didn t know how disconnected I was from a sense of as you put it a context of being in a world where things are greater than myself. Herbert: Yup. Tommy: I just didn t get it. I didn t have the ability. My dimmer switch as you put it is super low. Tommy: So this is sort of the dilemma of every newcomer. Herbert: Yes, it is. Tommy: I mean they have to believe on some level, they have to see little victories to believe that they themselves can transform because at the beginning if I m thinking my thinking is not going to change, what would be the point of going through this process? Tommy: And I m in so much pain from my thinking. If you tell me, Well, in three months, you re going to be thinking the same way, I d be out the door on a relapse. Tommy: Because what would be the point? 11

12 Right. Tommy: But the fact is we do transform and we actually even though like you said my spiritual awakening is common in ways and in over time the gradual variety I have a lot of relief in the beginning. Herbert: Sure. Tommy: In my first year of recovery there was a lot of good times and a lot of laughs and tremendous relief like I don t know where this thing was going but I feel better. Herbert: And that s why the meetings are so important, the meetings are not actually described in the Big Book as part of the program. Tommy: Right. Herbert: But they re described in a couple of places as places where newcomers go to find fellowship because we re isolated and we can find some camaraderie and we can find some support and we can learn from other people s mistakes rather than our own and it s kind of like the cheerleader system. Tommy: Yes. Herbert: And where you were going also with the first part of your question was I believe that the alcohol and drugs is a problem but it s not the problem. And part of the early experience is that people get freed from alcohol and drugs for 30 days and 60 days and 90 days and that s the first time in 10 or 20 or 30 years that they ve been able to have that experience of relief and freedom so that s the incremental hope that they get and then if they stay around and don t do any work, they will start saying, Is this all there is? Just freedom from drugs and alcohol? Which is really wonderful because I never had it before. But they begin to feel the hole in their soul because the real problem though is very clear is the unmanageability, the spiritual malady and he calls it the cancer of the soul which goes right back to what the Oxford group talked about in terms of this process of the six steps is soul surgery, that is excising, removing surgically these cancers in us that are the impediments to our relationship with the light. For the last 25 years, I ve used the word flourish, my life flourished. And it s interesting recently I ve got interested in positive psychology so I began reading Seligman s book and the title of his book is Flourish. Yeah, really but he s not talking about 12 step, he s talking about emotional development Maslow style in terms of self- actualization. How do you want to flourish as a human being? You get conscious and you get compassionate. What is the Buddhist say? You get wisdom and you get compassion. What is the 12- stepper say? You do meditation and you do service. My own spiritual 12

13 director said, Herb, and he s not in 12 step, he says, Spiritual path is the spiritual power. The vocabulary is different but the underlying principles and rhythm is absolutely the same. Tommy: That s right. I love it. I love it. So we re on this pursuit of compassion. We re on this pursuit of consciousness. We re on this pursuit of waking up and we find that putting down drugs and alcohol and other addictive behavior while a critical step along the journey is not the end of that journey by any means. Herbert: The beginning. Tommy: The beginning. So this is such an important point because if you don t get to that second stage, if you don t do that, the next piece of work and just to bring it down to the real world, I m watching people suffer around the idea that they don t know what their purpose is. Herbert: That s correct. Tommy: They don t know what their mission is. They don t know why they re here. Herbert: That s right. Tom: How did they use their gifts, how did they plug in and engage in life. These are the questions that come up once somebody has let go of drugs and alcohol for a while. Tommy: So obviously a big part of what I would refer to as second stage recovery is beginning to really dig down in to this question of what is our purpose, what is our mission here? Tommy: And I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with putting your gifts to work for other people. Herbert: Well, in fact that you know already, you saw the sneaking suspicion on your part, you know, experientially but you re just leading me in like in to the little bear trap but of course it s wonderful and Dennis Prager [SP] one of my heroes did a whole series on happiness. And he said anybody who wants to be happy will never be happy because happiness is not a product; it s a byproduct of your relationship with something bigger than yourself and your service to the people around you. And it just relates to exactly 13

14 what I just recapped a little earlier in terms of the Christian philosophy, the Buddhist philosophy, the 12- step philosophy. It s about what does it mean to become fully human? All right. What makes us specifically human that we can know that we know and that we can make free decisions and take free actions? And those are the things that allow us to become in fact become conscious and then help other people. So part of my passion is to help people do the steps with the promise that at the end of that process, there will be an awakening which will organically lead them, organically lead them in to a path that is as unique to them as their finger print. Never before, not now nor ever will be a fingerprint like theirs and their mission in this life is that you unique. I have no idea what it is but it will be revealed if in fact you elevate your consciousness through removal of the impediments to your consciousness and if you begin thinking about other people, that the nature of the disease, the spiritual malady, the unmanageability that cancer of the soul is self centeredness and when in fact we make a decision to turn and take the actions to turn and then find out through spiritual awakening that we are turned, we re turned from ourselves to a relationship with other, with a capital O and we re turned from ourselves to a relationship and service to other with a small o. Tommy: Thank you. Thank you, Herb. I want to dig in a little bit; you used the word impediments. Herbert: Yes. Tommy: In yoga and on the path of yoga, we talk a lot about what we call the [00:38:04], the [00:38:05] are the fluctuations of the mind that hold us back on the path. I want to talk about that from the 12- step perspective. What are the impediments to the spiritual experience? Herbert: Bill is really clear in the Big Book and supplementing it with the 12 and 12 and he says we have survival instincts. The survival instincts if you ve studied any biology or psychology, the survival instincts are anger, fight, fear, flight and camouflage to hide, dishonesty. And so the Big Book is built on that. The fourth step is to inventory and analyze underneath your anger, what are your motives, what are your beliefs, what is your responsibilities, contributing to this anger he calls resentment which is anger held and felt over and over again. The same analysis with the fear, where does it come from? What is the motive? What is your belief? The same with the sex inventory or the dishonesty s inventory. What are your motives? What are your behaviors? What is your impact on other people? And underneath each of those, he speculates that you re powerless to really do anything about it and that s why you need a context bigger than yourself although you do have responsibility to analyze it, to understand it, to dig out and really get clear on the delusion that is the lens through which you look. And since 14

15 it s the lens through which you look, you can t see the lens because it s that which you re looking through. Tommy: Yes. Herbert: Yeah, I know it sounds and we laugh and yet, it was embarrassing for me at age 48 to actually see the lens through this process that I was looking through and see how deluded it was, how distorted it was. No wonder I had trouble in my life because I wasn t seeing reality as it is, I was seeing reality as I am. Tommy: Yes. Yes. And so moving through the steps, and it s very interesting that in step 4, rather than write a life history in just sort of a biopic this is what happened and then this is what happened, they direct us to look in everything through the lens of resentment. And it s fascinating, it s a fascinating decision and so effective. I mean I consider it one of the most incredible processes I ve ever been through. Tommy: Do you have any sense of where that came from? Because it seems to me like an absolute stroke of brilliance. Herbert: In terms of the structure of the Big Book, no I don t know where it came from. Although the Oxford group did have an inventory as one of their six steps but I don t know exactly the ingredients of that inventory. Thank you for the question because I m a [00:41:20] historian and I ll try to unpack that. Tommy: Yeah. No, because I m thinking you know you could have easily said to me, All right, Tommy, write down some of the bad things you ve done in your life. Tommy: That wouldn t get in to the root of the matter. Herbert: All that does is make you feel bad and quite frankly, it is appropriate at the beginning that I did feel guilty. I would call my sponsor and I d say, Lloyd, I feel so guilty. He would pause for about 30 seconds and then he d say, Herb, that s because you are. Tommy: It s so good. It s so good. But of course, I mean that s a normal and of course, it s a human emotion to feel that way. I think where a lot of people get in to trouble is where that guilt turns in to shame and sticks around for a while. 15

16 Right. A couple of issues that I now help people address in that fourth step work, guilt and shame are not words in the big book but because of modern psychology in my experience, they belong in the inventory. You need to address what is real and what is not real, what is appropriate or what is inappropriate, what is healthy what is not healthy as part of an inventory process preparing for the fifth step, the confession. Tommy: Yes. Now Bill Wilson as I understand it, I d love to get your thoughts on this, he was always looking to improve the ways to try to help alcoholics get over this disease. Tommy: So he was willing to look far and wide. He was never set on like if he thought that we were at 50% success rate, that wouldn t have been enough for him. He would have been, what about the other 50%? Herbert: Yes. Tommy: So he was someone that he was a seeker. Am I correct? Herbert: Absolute seeker and maybe mystic action. Tommy: Okay. Thank you for that. So you just touched on something, which you said you know what we ve learned in the last 80 years through psychology you suggested that there are some words that don t show up in the Big Book or through the process that might actually be helpful this time. Tommy: Would you go so far as to say that there are improvements to be made upon the program or the Big Book? Or where are you at on that? Herbert: I think, Bill suggested that we know only a little more will be revealed and I think that was a wonderful intuition on his part. To answer one part of it, no I would not change the Big Book or the 12- step process one bit. Yes, I do believe that there are some additional experiences and also information that are wonderful supplements to the step process outlined in the big book and you will read some of that in the 12 and 12. Bill wrote that in He had 16 years of sobriety so he was making a comment on the step experience of 16 years and there s some material in there that is a great supplement to the big book process. He was under the mentorship of the judge, a priest, Father Ed Dowling for 20 years, 1940 to 1960 and it s clearly reflected in some of the interpretation of the step material in the 12 and 12 especially in step 4 where he 16

17 includes the seven capital sins and in step 11 where he talks about the equivalent of lexio divina which is a Catholic tradition for doing a contemplative practice with reading material. Tommy: Now I want to address the fellowship for a moment if you re willing to go there. Herbert: Absolutely. Tommy: So you walk in to a room and you ve got people at every stage of recovery. There s newcomers. There are people that have been around for a while. There are people in the middle. Some people had relapsed many times. Other people had been on from the beginning. There s a just a wide variety of experience, not just in terms of drugs and alcohol or addiction, addictive behaviors but also experience within recovery and also life experience and educational experience. If you re new to the program and you understand that the way this works is there s going to be a sponsor that will help you through the steps and the way you find that sponsor is somebody has a certain energy, they say certain things that resonate with you. It just seems to me like you could like you commented about your first sponsor that this was the guy that had not had the transformation but he ended up being a sponsor. You were fortunate enough to find someone later on who could help you through a spiritual awakening. How are we supposed to how is anyone supposed to navigate a fellowship safely? Right. Herbert: First of all, I can t imagine that actually being a goal because there s no predicting, there s no sponsorship training, right. Tommy: Right. Herbert: It s literally everybody does it with getting experience and fortunately there s people with great intention and great heart and then they have a great experience but also keep in mind, what are meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous? What are meetings of Gamblers Anonymous? What are meetings of [00:47:02]? There s the emergency outpatient department of the mental hospital, right. Tommy: Exactly. Herbert: This is the gathering of the sick people. This is where the wounded go. This is where the dying go. It s not the gathering of the mentally well. So we need to go in to the meetings with some circumspection about that and of course we don t because we don t know anything about it. We walk in clueless and a lot of this, I just believe the spirit is taking care of us. There s a universal benevolent spirit. It might be the human spirit. It might be G- O- D. It might be higher power. It might be who knows Bill talks about the spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, one of my favorite lines. 17

18 It doesn t make any difference. Somehow we re able to negotiate this because there s generally, generally, the intention of helping because people come here desperate and a lot of people find solution to their desperation and because they re so grateful they found it they want to help other people find it and it s that good intention that I think pretty much overrides all the dysfunctionality that you find in meetings. Tommy: Yes and I completely agree with you and I also realize that this is going to be where a lot of the nay sayers take issue with this process because there people will cite the lack of scientific background or people will say sponsors behaving more like a therapist than a sponsor, these people are not qualified to take you through the step, to take you through life like a therapist would be. So there s a lot of I m not suggesting a solution. I m just saying this is a place where people have a lot of problems. Herbert: Well and those are classic prob those are real problems where sponsors act as therapists or financial counselors or marriage counselors or God forbid prescription drug counselors. Tommy: Right. Herbert: I mean there are so many mistakes that could be made through ignorance but it s the human condition and somehow we ve survived it. Tommy: Yes. Yes. Thank you. Herbert: Just as a post note on that, the most important ingredient in all the moving parts of the 12 step fellowship is sponsorship, meaning that you find somebody with experience that you hold yourself accountable to because if you do that, all the other moving parts will fit in some place sometime. But without that, you re going to be rudderless. Tommy: Thank you. I just want to talk a little bit about the ninth step, the amends process. And I want people that because it s another piece of this which is one of the most important things I ve done in my life and I want to share some of it with people who might be watching, want to understand more deeply what this process is. The ninth step, we re talking about making amends to those we ve harmed. Can you speak a little bit about your experience with that and how you see it and how you teach it at this point in your recovery? The ninth step is in fact and is so such a natural [secuitor] from the concept of sponsorship. If there s any one place that you need an experience person, a guide, it s in the ninth step. You can do every other step on your own literally but I don t believe that you can effectively do, correctly do in any appropriate way the ninth 18

19 step without experience guidance. And I had that guidance in the first time I did the steps without much guidance from my first sponsor, I did an autobiographical four step as you had suggested which I didn t see any truth and I didn t change, so I went around saying I m sorry, which was just pathetic, just pathetic. I didn t understand what I was sorry for and I certainly hadn t made a decision to change. Once I got a man who understood the process, the Big Book and the ninth step process and had some experience with it, he told me that the ninth step, he helped me see from the instructions that the ninth step has two ingredients. Number one, it s about amend, meaning change. Amend the constitution. I m committed to change the behavior that created the destruction. But the other aspect of amend is I m committed to repair the damage that I did to other people. It s not about necessarily my behavior. The eight step is about identifying the harm that I did. What was the impact of my behavior on those people that had come in to my life and I needed to assess that and with the guidance of experience person determine whether or not I actually should address that with the person. Maybe time has passed sufficiently that it wouldn t be appropriate to interfere in their lives or maybe it would and I couldn t sort that out on my own because my ego still is fully intact. At this point, it hasn t been dismantled by the final phase of the ninth step and so he was able to help me discern. Never told me what to do but helped me discern in prayer and in his experience where I needed to address the people directly or indirectly on the phone or by letter, whether I d just leave it alone and creatively figure out an alternative way of making the amend and how to make the amend. And we even did dress rehearsals. So there were a couple really really touchy situations that would require some experience and he would sit there playing the role of the other person as I would then sit there and go through the script if you will, a process of acknowledging the harm done asking what other harm I may have done that I m unaware of, suggesting the repair that I think is appropriate and then asking them, Is there anything else that would help repair the damage that I have caused you, the hurt that I have caused you? Humbling, humbling, as you know, the transforming. I have freedom. I finished those amends. People who were dead, people who I couldn t find, people who I shouldn t find, you know what I mean. Tommy: Yeah. Herbert: I have completed those amends, either directly or indirectly through our spiritual practice. Tommy: Yes. Thank you so much for that. And I can remember obviously in the Big Book this is one when the promises are mentioned right on the ninth step. Herbert: Yes. 19

20 Tommy: And so if anybody wants to know what s being promised, what s being offered to you, you can see that through the ninth step process and it did actually timing wise, it did play out that way for me. I did get a lot of relief after my fifth step. I wasn t struck enlightened by any means but I do remember feeling better like I m glad I did this process. I can see the value, the efficacy of it and I m grateful. When I got through the ninth step amend process, I remember feeling much much lighter in my life, much much freer in my life. And maybe right around that time, I don t know exactly, when I woke up one day and I realized I actually didn t think about drugs and alcohol anymore. Yeah. Tommy: It wasn t a regular threat to me anymore. Herbert: My freedom came before I ever went to AA, before I ever went understood I had a drinking problem, before I had ever been was in prayer, when I was willing to support my wife s recovery by not drinking, that was their suggestion, it was removed permanently. I mean it s a totally different experience and everybody has a different experience. But I wasn t transformed until my fifth year and I didn t recognize that I had been transformed until as you just said I had completed my amends. And then I became conscious of waking up free rather than a sense of constriction and a sense of restless, irritable and discontent, which was my experience forever for 48 years. Tommy: Yeah. Herbert: I began to wake up with a sense of joy and freedom and happiness. Tommy: Yes. Herbert: A sense of ease and comfort. Tommy: Do you remember the first time I m moving ahead now to talk about carrying the message to other alcoholics. Tommy: Do you remember your first sponsee? Herbert: Well Tommy: Because interestingly, I m not sure I do. 20

21 Herbert: Yeah, I don t think I do. I remember my first effort at reaching out. I was really new, probably six months and I was in court paying a traffic ticket and I heard somebody trying to pay a traffic ticket and arguing with the guy about it and I could hear the alcoholic just in his vocabulary. So you know I m six months sober so I m righteous, right. And I got him aside and I started talking to him and he liked what he heard and he went to meetings and I took him to meetings and after about a month, I didn t hear from him for a long time about a month. And so I called and his mother answered, and I said, whatever his name was, I actually forget, I said, Is he around? She said, No. Last week he hung himself. Tommy: Oh. Oh. Herbert: So I got it, man. This is a serious disease. Tommy: Wow. Yes. Herbert: I didn t take it personally. Tommy: It s not personal. Herbert: But I understood. All right. Tommy: Yeah. Herbert: And he was 28 years old. Tommy: Oh that s rough. Tommy: It s a gift in a sense for you to come away from that and understand the seriousness of things and also the powerlessness as a sponsor. Herbert: There you go. As a sponsor, I am passionate about your experience but I m not attached to it. And so I approach my sponsees by saying, I have suggestions and if you take them, there will be consequences and if you don t take them, there will be consequences. Choose your consequences. I want it with a deep passion for you. I can t give it to you and it s not because of me that you get it, and it s not because of me that you lose it. 21

22 Tommy: That s right. That s right. Very powerful message. Thank you, Herb. So with regards to carrying this energy, these teachings out in the world, can you talk a little bit about the work that you do today? Herbert: Yes. Well, because of the work that I began doing after I ve had my transforming experience, people began to come to me for a similar experience because word of mouth happens and then a woman approached me and knew that I did not work with women directly one on one. I followed the suggestions of the literature from general [servants] office and so she said, If I put a workshop together, would you conduct a workshop because you re not dealing one on one with women, you re dealing with a group? And that was 1996 and I ve done workshops every since every year and they ve grown wonderfully. I do one in my area here. I do another one in the city just north of me and I do three of them on the telephone one out of Australia, one out of the UK and one out of North America. And this message gets carried and that s when I know that it s not just AA, it s not just [00:59:40], and quite frankly it s not just 12 step people because 10% of the people that come to my workshops are not in 12 step. They have heard about the transformation process through the methodology of the 12 steps and they want that. And if they stay and if they do the work and if they complete the work, all those conditions, they will have the spiritual awakening. Tommy: Incredible. And how can people learn more about your work? How can they find you and your books? How can they sign up for future workshops if they want to connect with you in a more immersive way? Herbert: The best way is through my website, Herbk.com. It s very simple, Herbk.com. And EL is on there and they ll be to contact me. My two books are listed there. My CD s are listed there. On that website is an entire whole year recorded workshop, weekly workshop going through the steps with the table of contents so they could zero in on the column 3 of the resentment inventory and get my teaching on that, etc. Tommy: Incredible. Well, I mean, Herb, I literally feel like I could speak to you for 24 of these hours. Herbert: I think we could. Tommy: Let s do it again. Herbert: I would love to. Tommy: real soon and in the meantime, I know people are going to come looking to participate in this incredible work you re doing, myself included. We are in the same 22