The revolution moves apace, the glory is upon us, wherever you re watching, just remember, if you go join us on Rumble, especially Rumble Premium, we benefit from that in ways that I can t even describe. There are occultist reasons and interdimensional beings that will reward us for you signing up on Rumble.
00:00:25.000Wherever you're watching, just remember, if you go join us on Rumble, especially Rumble Premium, we benefit from that in ways that I can't even describe.
00:00:32.000There are occultist reasons and interdimensional beings that will reward us for you signing up on Rumble.
00:00:37.000I'm joined today, as always, to talk about the news, although the news continually changes by this brilliant team of fantastic men, many of whom, most of whom I'd say, have accepted Christ in their life.
00:01:35.000We're going to get you to do more UK-based items where we investigate news stories in the UK, like get you to infiltrate things, interview people, stuff like that.
00:01:45.000You know, like you did that brilliant reporting on the Tommy Robinson March.
00:01:47.000Wanting to do more of that kind of thing.
00:01:49.000Yeah, there's another one coming up actually in May, I believe.
00:03:14.000Before we get into our fantastic new item, Crack On, where we talk about recovery, let us know in the comments and chat if you're struggling with addiction or attachment or loss, particularly chemical dependency.
00:03:24.000That's where me, Joe, and Dave have the most experience.
00:03:53.000Purchase your tickets to see my show called A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Church.
00:03:59.000A funny thing happened on the way to church.
00:04:01.000Funny thing happened on the way to church.
00:04:03.000Brilliant show about coming to the Lord and about, well, actually, the powerful demonic forces that run our institutions.
00:04:10.000These are the sort of things people are becoming aware of.
00:04:12.000I've got a few stories to talk about before we get into recovery.
00:04:16.000I want to just tag that beloved Shia LaBeouf, who I used to see around, good lad, good lad, has found the Lord, he's become as Catholic as possible.
00:04:24.000Look at him there, he's right into it, and it's just lovely to see Shia LaBeouf saved.
00:05:09.000Soak them in baking soda for 12 to 15 minutes.
00:05:13.000It breaks down and removes far more pesticide residues and waxes than plain water ever could, protecting your family from hidden chemicals.
00:05:22.000I reposted it with a simple message, does it work on your testicles?
00:05:27.000And my hope is that that will inspire an ongoing online conversation and hopefully more lives will be saved.
00:05:34.000How many people must die before the change?
00:05:38.000Now, look, I want to let you know, Liz, because you know me, I'm not a racist, and I don't believe in racism or any phobias against anyone doing...
00:05:52.000It's pretty clear what's in the old good book when it comes to things like, well, firstly, become a follower of Jesus.
00:05:57.000It's pretty clear on that subject, although the Old Testament, there's some people, there are some people to whom we regular Christians are Mormons, innit?
00:06:30.000La Pearson that posted this online is about the new mayor of Brighton, pretty near where you're from, Joe, has been sworn in and is Muslim.
00:06:39.000Now, me personally, I don't dispute anyone's religious freedoms.
00:06:44.000If you're a follower of Islam, of course, you should be a follower of Islam if that's your thing, or if you're an atheist, or any of the other made-up wrong religions.
00:06:57.000Like, yeah, no, I think they're all should be followed.
00:07:00.000But what sort of strikes me as interesting is in Britain, which is of course a secular but nominally Christian country, in particular, I draw attention to the fact that the authority of the monarch is meant to be derived from divine authority.
00:07:15.000It's God that apparently, according to, I feel like they won't say constitutional law, because Britain has no constitution.
00:07:22.000But to Britain's inner national mythos, the reason we have a royal family is because the royal family has been appointed by God.
00:07:29.000So that's kind of, and it's a Christian God in that instance.
00:07:32.000So it's by definition a monarchy, and the monarchy is Christian.
00:08:08.000Now, I actually think that mayor looks like a nice person.
00:08:11.000I think he's emanating a pretty warm vibe.
00:08:13.000And I think public service should and could be done by anyone who's got good, solid values when it comes to community service, kindness, love, non-corruption, non-bias.
00:08:22.000But it's interesting, the explicitness of the religiosity.
00:08:27.000I.e. says As-salamu alaykum at the very top of it.
00:08:30.000I think he said another sort of Muslim thing during it.
00:08:34.000And again, I'm not saying that's wrong.
00:08:35.000I'm just saying, is there equivalency to that?
00:08:39.000Would someone say, well, of course there is you moron when parliament begins, you know, or every time you're in a court case, you swear on the Bible, which is odd because it's a secular country.
00:08:48.000And when I swear on a Bible at my trial, I bet I'm the only person in the room who believes in God.
00:08:52.000So don't you think it's interesting that something can be so explicitly religious in a country where its stated religion has been not suppressed but kind of submerged.
00:09:44.000I don't think there's anything, of course, wrong with having a South Asian mayor or representatives of a country's political system that were not born in that country.
00:09:55.000But I suppose what we're doing is we're really testing the boundaries of what a nation is.
00:09:59.000A nation is by definition a contained set of land laws represented by a flag, in some cases a constitution, usually by some shared ideology, a bunch of tax rules, some legislation, generally beneficial to elites that operate beyond those very borders.
00:10:15.000So I certainly don't encourage working people from around the world to get locked in deadly tension with one another on the basis of race or religion.
00:10:24.000That's the worst and most stupid thing we could possibly be doing.
00:10:26.000But it does tell you something interesting about a country's sense of identity when our own religiosity, our own faith in God, our own faith in real meaning or purpose has been sublimated to such a degree and we are yet somehow celebrating external, extraneous, secondary, different faiths.
00:11:26.000There's a lot of talk in scripture about nations being under God, nations being secondary to God, and almost the indication that nations will be overwhelmed at some point by God.
00:11:35.000And that's partly what I think we might be experiencing now, that people may start to identify with something.
00:11:42.000You know, I identify probably with my own family, I would say, more than my Englishness.
00:11:47.000I'm more concerned about my dog than I'm concerned about, you know, bloody hell, to be honest, the potential of Britain being in a war with Russia.
00:11:55.000Because in truth, the nation is an abstract concept, bolted on, bolted on.
00:12:02.000So, you know, I think they should be careful with messing with the fragility of an abstract concept like nation, which for a long while in a country like ours, the UK, was utilized to get generation after generation to fling their lives before the foreign fire of, in general, German machine guns.
00:12:19.000And only now is that nationhood being revoked in favor of a word he said twice there, diversity.
00:12:25.000And it's likely that that word diversity is part of a mandate in the same way that, you know, safe and effective crops up in news reports around vaccines.
00:12:34.000Dave, what do you think of a British political system that enshrines and celebrates the religiosity of, in this case, a Muslim mayor so overtly?
00:12:49.000It seems like a forced agenda to come in and push and like forcing a change in culture.
00:12:56.000That's the part that, like, I mean, it's got a bad feeling to it that, hey, we're coming in here with an agenda, that it's not a natural thing built from the culture, that this mayor's coming up.
00:13:09.000It's, oh, no, we're going to place him in there so that we can change the culture, and it's a forced, I don't know.
00:13:17.000What I liked when I live here, I reckon you're right.
00:13:19.000When I lived in East London, I was around a lot of Muslim folk and visited the East London mosque a couple of times.
00:13:26.000I was really interested in Islam because Muslims were against the establishment power that I considered to be the most serious threat to individual freedom of all people, Muslim and non-Muslim at that time.
00:13:40.000This was around the point of Iraq and Iraq too and Guantanamo Bay and people getting arrested and interned.
00:13:47.000And I thought, yeah, the Muslims, man, they got a case.
00:14:05.000But I also now believe, Dave, like you, that part of the domestic disruption that's been caused in countries like Germany, the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent your country, the United States, it seems to be sort of different here, is as a result of migration programs that are deliberately disruptive.
00:14:23.000And I became aware of it mostly when it started happening in Ireland, because in the country of Ireland, you can't make the same claims that, well, Britain went around the world colonizing an imperial force disrupting all of these nations.
00:14:37.000If eventually that leads to those countries being so war-torn that there's a refugee crisis, Britain should pay the price.
00:14:44.000And I was like, I can see that argument, I can see that argument.
00:14:46.000And America, America is a global economy that exploits its relationships with secondary nations, and every nation is secondary to the United States.
00:14:54.000And that causes, whether it's lithium mining across the world or whatever's going on with cobalt in the Congo or wherever, you know, America's power is causing disruption.
00:15:04.000I can see why America and America is a nation built on migration.
00:15:07.000But when it was Ireland, I thought, hang on a minute, those guys didn't do that.
00:15:11.000They were colonized by the British, oppressed, that to fight for their national identity.
00:15:15.000And they were saying the same stuff, they being the globalist media, about Ireland, you're racist, da-da-da-da-da.
00:15:25.000And then I saw a brilliant article by, now don't be childish, the Chinese artist, Iwee Wee.
00:15:31.000I Wee Wee was a Chinese artist who'd lived in Germany for a time as a refugee, did I Wee Wee?
00:15:37.000And I WeeWee, like when he left China as a refugee, I said, don't be childish.
00:15:41.000I WeeWee left China and he said like, you know, because he was a refugee and an artist for freedom of speech issues and he's just gone back to China because his mum was dying.
00:15:52.000He's been in, seeking refugee status in Germany, Berlin.
00:15:57.000And he's like, Germany's worse now than China.
00:16:00.000Like, China's social controls are more relaxed and it's a less messed up country than Germany.
00:16:08.000I remember I WeeWee, don't be childish, because like I WeeWee contributed when I done the New Statesman was my first gambit into the political in the UK when I said there's no point voting.
00:16:19.000I was the guest editor of a magazine called The New Statesman because my girlfriend at the time, Jemima Kahn, was sort of affiliated with it and she got me to do it.
00:16:30.000And anyway, I got good people involved.
00:16:38.000And that's when I said there's no point voting.
00:16:40.000The magazine itself, The Snides, did an article the very next week saying why Russell Brown's wrong.
00:16:46.000Like they got another actor, this sort of actor at our peep show, Robert Webb, a show that we all, all the English people in this show, love, actually.
00:16:54.000They got him to say, Russell Brown's crazy and he's an idiot and read some fucking Orwell.
00:16:58.000And I've actually read quite a lot of Orwell, all George Orwell, actually.
00:17:02.000And it turns out George Orwell was against totalitarianism and did not feel super encouraged by the tendencies of social democracy and how they slide towards totalitarianism.
00:17:15.000He was one of the people that contributed and it was just really interesting because I was thinking about how much my life has changed since I started to publicly talk about politics.
00:17:23.000First then, with saying not vote, then when I started talking about running for mayor of London in around 2014, 2015, then when during COVID I made all this YouTube content where I criticised Moderna, Pfizer, then going on from that attacking state interests.
00:17:37.000It's just interesting how much my life has changed.
00:17:41.000And I'm grateful for all of it because I've found the Lord and I recognize now that you can't attack state power really from anywhere other than truth.
00:17:51.000If you don't have access to a profound truth, you're just going to be locked in a cultural conflict forever.
00:17:56.000If it's just like, I think that, you know, people should be able to express themselves sexually however they want, in the end you'll get into some sort of drama.
00:18:05.000If it's some sort of other tribal affiliation or identity, you'll get in trouble.
00:18:10.000But if what you're saying is there is a God, God has told us how to live.
00:18:14.000He's even given us instruction for how to handle people who don't believe in God at all or believe in other gods.
00:18:34.000And by then, our movement will have grown.
00:18:36.000Our online independent media movement will have grown.
00:18:39.000People will know that independent media means immediate mass communication.
00:18:42.000And the technology that's so changed everything from the way your food is delivered or the way you watch movies will ultimately be implemented in politics, granting direct democracy and decentralized systems of governance.
00:19:13.000Then they go, shit, while they're dealing with that, set up our own cryptocurrencies and get with it quick because this shit's going to take us down.
00:19:22.000And that's what they did with the internet.
00:19:23.000They'll go, right, what is everyone, what's everyone against?
00:21:25.000That's why True Gold Republic exists, not to sell fear, but to explain reality.
00:21:31.000True Gold Republic has released a 2026 expert guide that breaks down why gold and silver are rising, what those moves signal heading into 2026 and how physical metals can help restore a measure of financial independence.
00:21:45.000This is the same conversation True Gold Republic has been having with Americans who don't want guesses, they want strategy.
00:22:32.000Finally, before we get into our new recovery podcast, Crack on with Joe, Russell and Dave.
00:22:40.000I just wanted to show you this thing because it's so, it's like it's not often that I see something that I think is just flat out beautiful.
00:22:46.000It was some footage of on X of David Bowie and Annie Lennox rehearsing before they do live aid.
00:22:54.000And amidst the treasures available there is like George Michael just singing, watching it, like George Michael watching and joining in.
00:23:03.000And David Bowie's got a fag on, right, she's like smoking a snout while rehearsing it.
00:23:08.000And Lennox is like effortless brilliance.
00:23:10.000And it's like, well, this is a rehearsal.
00:23:12.000You don't see art of this quality really anywhere ever.
00:25:36.000Support me and support Rumble Premium.
00:25:38.000You won't only be supporting me, you'll get additional access to Mug Club, that's Crowder's Gig, Tim Cast, that's Tim Paul's racket, and Glenn Greenwald's additional content.
00:27:50.000I'm 23 years, one day at a time, and I liked crack and heroin.
00:27:54.000I realized the other day that it's heroin that I really like because of oblivion when I was thinking about Joseph Campbell saying that in the waking state, you're interacting with reality.
00:28:03.000In the dream state, you're digesting with reality.
00:28:06.000In the blissful sleep state, you're in oblivion.
00:28:09.000And I think some people really like a heightened state, you know, like really want to be experiencing.
00:28:16.000I think if you're really into, say, for example, sex, maybe, or, I don't know, partying or something like that, I get the idea that heightened states are very good.
00:28:23.000But I've been trying to spot in the 23 years since I've been clean and sober what it is that I'm looking for and what it is that I want.
00:28:31.000And even though this podcast is, of course, not affiliated with any 12-step program in particular, the famous Alcoholics Anonymous third step is about the idea of surrendering, handing over your life and your will to the care of God as you understood God.
00:30:13.000i'm responsible for my actions you know and to to do that but outcomes results um even even main decisions you know it's it's i'm i'm not the it gives a good example in uh the 60s there and in the big book where it talks about an actor trying to run the whole show So you have an actor that's trying to play the director.
00:31:25.000But I really don't know how to do that.
00:31:27.000And I really don't, I think when you do the prayer in the third step, I really don't think it ends until you hit the seventh step where it has the amen in the seventh step.
00:31:38.000Because through the process of inventory and stuff, I get to see how I play God.
00:31:48.000So the reference that Dave just made to the big book is the colloquial term used in some 12-step fellowships, I understand, notably Alcoholics Anonymous with who this podcast has no affiliation.
00:32:02.000And in Alcoholics Anonymous, the big book says, this is the actor analogy or allegory that Dave is referring to.
00:32:14.000There are 12 steps obviously in a 12-step program.
00:32:17.000The first one is surrendering your will, admission, really, admitting you're powerless, you're powerless over alcohol or drugs or whatever, and your life's become unmanageable.
00:32:27.000The second one is come to believe that power greater than yourself could return you to sanity.
00:32:32.000And the third one that we're talking about here, it seems, is made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood God.
00:32:39.000Before we get Joe's opinions and feelings on step three, here is the reading that Dave referred to.
00:32:46.000The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.
00:32:53.000On that basis, we're almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good.
00:33:00.000Most people try to live by self-propulsion.
00:33:03.000Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show.
00:33:08.000He's forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in his own way.
00:33:13.000If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great.
00:33:19.000Everybody including himself would be pleased.
00:34:07.000Is he not really a self-seeker, even when trying to be kind?
00:34:13.000Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if only he manages well?
00:34:25.000That's one of my favorite lines in all 12-step literature, the idea that you can wrest satisfaction out of this world if only you manage well.
00:34:33.000That somehow the material world has got something to offer you.
00:34:36.000What often starts as a journey with getting off drugs and alcohol leads pretty early on to the recognition or at least the acknowledgement that what you've been trying to do is make the world make you happy?
00:34:49.000And that idea is such an anathema to some people that, well, what else would make you happy if the whole system's built on get a job, get a car, get a family, get even things that are, as it brilliantly illustrates there, even if it's not something that's nefarious?
00:35:02.000I mean, it's pretty obvious, someone like me wants to go around having a bunch of sex and being famous, you know, anyone will tell you that's a dumb way to make yourself happy eventually.
00:35:10.000But what if it's like you want to have kids and be respected in your community?
00:35:14.000It's still a kind of a form of resting satisfaction from this world, or as the Bible would have it, worship of false idols.
00:35:21.000Joe, tell me what comes up for you when we're talking about step three, both what Dave there shared and the reading.
00:35:27.000So like, I see that as the start of the program, really, because I mean, in the big book there, you've got four chapters previous to that.
00:35:35.000And it doesn't even, it don't really mention steps.
00:36:19.000Because what I say to a lot of people when I sponsor them in that is, look, there's a lot of empty seats in here.
00:36:24.000And all of us know people that have died having not got to a 12-step fellowship, hung themselves, overdosed, crashed a car, however it happened, right?
00:36:33.000So maybe just by getting a seat in there, you've been saved by the grace of God already, right?
00:36:47.000What did I do to deserve a seat in here?
00:36:49.000And like, after that bit you read there, Russell, it says, like, before we took the step, like, we recognized we have a new employer being all-powerful who will provide what we need if we keep close to him and perform his work well.
00:37:03.000And then established on such footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs, and more and more interested in what we can do for others.
00:37:21.000So it suggests there is an ongoing process.
00:37:24.000Having made the decision not to run on self-will, drink, use or kill myself, I'm going to turn towards the will of God through four and five, take inventory, six and seven, defect, and so on.
00:37:40.000We've already arrived, though, at sort of what seems to be a critical and important point is how are we men who apply this beyond alcohol?
00:37:51.000Like if we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God with regard to alcohol, we all know that sort of boils down to don't drink anymore one day at a time.
00:38:03.000But when we extrapolate that into, well, what is it that makes you drink really?
00:38:08.000And to distill it, you could say, my self-will makes me drink.
00:38:12.000And it's my self-will will cause problems for me in any number of ways.
00:38:16.000How do we then apply this truth that we've discovered with regard to alcohol to all the other areas of our life?
00:38:23.000Although I acknowledge that explicitly in the text there, I'm pointing to my phone, as if that provides any additional context.
00:38:31.000Like, how do we make clear that how do we deal with the sort of peculiar tension that everyone, when they think about 12-step programs, surely think, well, if someone's going to narcotics anonymous, they're giving up narcotics.
00:38:45.000If they're going to gamblers anonymous, they're giving up gambling.
00:38:47.000If they're going to Alcoholics Anonymous, they're giving up booze.
00:38:50.000So, Dave, how do you help me to understand this difference between handing over my will and my life to the care of God as I understand God, not drinking again?
00:39:02.000And how do you use it not only to not drink one day at a time, but I don't know, not getting arguments or not shout your kids or not living self-will.
00:39:51.000And step three, I think a lot up to this point is just a lot of accepting and understanding.
00:40:02.000Like for the first time when I went through the first three steps, I remember going, oh my gosh, like there's actually, it gave me words, a mental obsession, an allergic reaction, a physical allergy.
00:40:14.000Like this is what I've been experiencing.
00:40:40.000And then I have a body that once I take it in, has an allergic reaction that craves more, produces this craving.
00:40:46.000And so if I just had one or the other, I could possibly control it, but I can't control and I for sure can't control and enjoy, like it says on page 30.
00:40:55.000But when we hit step three, it's first like inflection points, like, okay, the first real kind of action that you take and you're going, okay, it's this decision.
00:41:04.000And like you're saying, this way of like, like, what does that look like when you make this decision?
00:41:14.000And thank goodness the book is so simple that, I mean, right after you get done with step three, it says next we launch on a course of vigorous action.
00:41:23.000It tells you exactly what to do because what it looks like is you're going to figure out what it looks like.
00:42:34.000There's no such thing as, there's no God.
00:42:37.000There's no perfect thing that I could be restored to.
00:42:40.000So, you know, I can see the arguments one can make for step two.
00:42:43.000But if you can get someone to go, do you think it's possible that things could be better?
00:42:47.000You know, particularly, again, if you're just asking them with regard to drugs and alcohol, normally you can say, well, Dave used to be on smack the whole time.
00:42:56.000Joe used to be all coked up the whole time.
00:43:06.000That's enough of an aperture for someone to enter with when the object remains substance dependency.
00:43:13.000But what I think is interesting to be talking about this in front of, like, Jake, a sort of a well-practiced Christian, is that when it gets to step three, what you're sort of suddenly saying is, you know inside you, in Michael Singer's brilliant book, Untethered Soul, he sort of talks about the idea, you know there are hands, this is the metaphor he uses, there are hands inside you that are either pulling something towards you or pushing something away, right?
00:43:52.000Now what the sort of Christian idea and what the step three idea seems to be is you, the owner of these hands, the expressor of this will, you get the fuck out of it.
00:44:07.000And like, you know, and if you're a Christian, you're saying, our Lord and Savior, you come in and you occupy this temporary tabernacle of my body.
00:44:54.000I'm so myself that I don't care about my kids.
00:44:57.000Like, I'm just too busy being Russell, so fuck off.
00:45:00.000Like, that's sort of like how I'll get, you know.
00:45:03.000But I know you understand it conceptually.
00:45:06.000And I guess in both of the second two steps, there's the invitation and evocation of the mystery.
00:45:12.000Something's going to come in here that's not of human power.
00:45:15.000Like you said with the three pertinent ideas, God could and would if he was sought.
00:45:19.000You know, that's on the metaphysical side of this, the spiritual side, shall we say, for simplicity's sake.
00:45:25.000But then, as Dave alluded to, the next thing is vigorous course of action.
00:45:29.000Like one of the great geniuses that I know in this program, Tim M, he says that step three means, you know, having made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, you know, what does that mean?
00:45:55.000Tell the truth about everything you've ever done or ever had happen sexually.
00:45:58.000You know, like that's a, it's a process.
00:46:01.000The steps are a process for inducing spiritual change.
00:46:05.000And at some point in this podcast, I hope we get to talk about Carl Jung and Bill W's fascinating correspondence, which is one of the documents that makes me realize the true depth and ingenuity of the 12-step program.
00:46:17.000But Joe, what were you thinking there, mate?
00:46:19.000I saw you were ready to go when, you know, about an hour ago.
00:46:22.000So I see it as like when you make that decision moving forward, having taken your inventory and the preceding steps, it kind of means to detach from your thinking, right?
00:46:35.000Your problems, potential solutions and outcomes.
00:47:03.000I heard a brilliant thing in a 12-step meeting one time where this geezer said, an illusion is if you was to see a belt on the floor and think it was a snake.
00:47:13.000A delusion is if you saw a belt in this floor and you just couldn't stop thinking it was a snake, no matter what, like even somehow it's a belt, there's belt holes in it.
00:47:25.000And I return to the delusion that I can wrest satisfaction out of this world.
00:47:30.000And I think part of what's happening to me now to make it sort of, you know, to make it more personal is with Bear dying tomorrow.
00:47:38.000So by the time people watch this, I suppose, Bear will be dead, is that it's such a kind of, it's hitting me so hard.
00:47:47.000And this happening while obviously I live in the, for my own sort of trials, testing, growth, what do I want to call it?
00:47:56.000Inuring, sanctification, the trials, the rape trials that will take place at some point this year.
00:48:05.000With Bear dying, it's like, like everything since these trials has changed, right?
00:48:11.000Like I've had to confront some complicated ideas.
00:48:14.000The complicated idea that people are willing to say that about me.
00:48:18.000You know, you know, everyone who's watches this show know that I think that there are some dark, weird reasons this is happening.
00:48:24.000Let me know in the comments and chat what you think about that.
00:48:26.000But I also know that being promiscuous does cause spiritual damage to the people you're promiscuous with.
00:48:32.000And so I'm recognizing that damage is in part my responsibility while being entirely separate from coercing people to do things against their will.
00:48:41.000So ever since I've been living in this kind of the quandary of knowing that I have atonement and that I want to be spiritually a good part.
00:48:50.000I don't want to be hurting people, though there'd be people in the world that have been hurt by me, of course.
00:48:55.000But yet, what do you do if someone or I wouldn't say someone, I would say if a story is created that makes it appealing to suggest that that was something different at the time.
00:49:08.000Like I have to live in this really unusual thing.
00:49:10.000And even small things that have happened in the meantime, like when like our kids were like doing, because all of our kids are friends here, like me and Dave and Jakes and stuff, like did a kind of a play, a play together.
00:49:21.000Like we were like, Peggy auditioned for a part in it and she didn't get it right.
00:49:25.000And like, I couldn't believe how like hurt I was by this very, very minor thing like in life where like, you know, like a kid's good, that's life, man.
00:49:37.000And I started to recognize as with the dog's death, even though I love this dog very purely and very truthfully and very authentically because with a dog, you don't wear your mask.
00:49:47.000A dog is a living contract between you and the family members.
00:49:51.000For example, in a practical way, I would let the dog run wild and my wife would go, don't let the dog run wild.
00:49:57.000So the dog becomes a living conversation about how we are different from one another.
00:50:02.000The dog, when I went to sort of cry in despair when I was on my own with him, like I felt as the cry came gurgling up me, I felt might be an effort to modulate it.
00:50:13.000Like I was like, oh, like I'll do it different if Jake was in the room.
00:50:16.000I'd do it different if my kids were in the room.
00:50:18.000I'd do it different if my wife was in the room.
00:50:19.000I'd do it different if I knew it was being filmed.
00:50:22.000Then like as it was coming, I realized no one's in the room except him.
00:50:51.000So what I feel like in an instance such as this one is that how does it, how it challenges my relationship with God, how it challenges my relationship with truth, how it shows me, yes, how it shows me you cannot wrest satisfaction out of anything in this world.
00:51:10.000The most joyful things in your life will become tragic.
00:51:14.000The most pleasurable things will become painful.
00:51:17.000And the things that are joyful are a temporary window to the one true universal and eternal grace of God.
00:51:24.000And things that are pleasurable are usually sort of biochemical prompts to get you to behave in a proper way, like eat food or procreate, that we try to whip away and sinfully use for our own self-idolatry.
00:51:40.000As it says elsewhere in 12-step literature, for example, about sex, that sex is meant to be an accompaniment to a loving relationship, not an object in itself.
00:51:51.000So I'm sort of struck by the almost limitless brevity and deep wisdom of the 12-step program.
00:51:58.000How important do you think it is, Dave, that it begins with something clear and identifiable like alcohol?
00:52:05.000And how strange do you consider it to be that something that's about something that you consider to be as specific as alcohol can be mapped onto and applied to literally anything?
00:52:14.000I mean, if someone gave you a manual of how to look after a car and they went, it'll work just as well if you apply it to an apple tree, you'd go, that's fucking weird.
00:52:32.000First thing I think of, one thing you mentioned when you say like, when it talks about he's a victim of the delusion he can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well.
00:52:49.000I think that's really the emphasis there.
00:52:51.000It's not that you're not going to have satisfaction and happiness out of this world.
00:52:54.000In fact, like since we've gotten sober, and I can speak for all three of us, I've seen huge amount of satisfaction, like way more than I would have when I was drinking.
00:53:05.000But it's not because I've managed it well.
00:53:09.000It's not because I figured out, I figured out how to live life on my terms.
00:53:13.000You know, it was because I gave up my terms.
00:53:17.000I think with, if you don't have, your second question was, if you don't have alcohol or some pressing factor that comes in and forces it like it does for us, where we don't have another, like I don't have another option.
00:54:05.000It's really more about, like, I mean, a lot of step three is really just going, okay, I'm going to make this decision.
00:54:11.000and I'd say some of step two too is because I'm looking at someone else and I'm seeing the fruit that they have and I'm going, okay, maybe.
00:54:20.000When you have it, I think of alcoholism as one of the greatest gifts that was ever given to me now, sober, because it's made me have a close relationship with God.
00:54:31.000Like I don't have that liberty like someone that's quote unquote normal that isn't an alcoholic or doesn't have something really pressing.
00:54:40.000A lot of people have their own addictions and sins.
00:54:43.000What I found is as I've taken lots of different guys that aren't alcoholics through the steps, they get a ton out of it and they're like blown away by it.
00:54:54.000But they don't have something pressing that keeps them doing 10, 11, and 12.
00:55:00.000And so that's really, when you go through the steps one time, that's one thing.
00:55:04.000But when you take step three, it's not saying that, hey, you're going to now be godly from here on out.
00:55:14.000When you're doing, the point's growth.
00:55:17.000And so as you screw up and you're back in self and then you do a 10th step and then you, you know, do 11, go work with another alcoholic in 12, you're growing through that process.
00:55:28.000And guys that aren't alcoholics, they don't stick with 10, 11, and 12 because they don't have something pressing that they have to.
00:55:36.000Before I go to Rob, who's going to tell us what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.
00:55:44.000Joe, what are your thoughts, mate, on what we've discussed so far?
00:55:51.000So what I was thinking there, as Dave touched on, step two, and like we came to believe in a power grade in our self could restore us to sanity.
00:56:01.000I see that now in terms of like, I was insane.
00:56:04.000I used to think I could drink and use drugs and manage all right.
00:59:06.000I felt that emptiness that I know that now only God can feel and being part of a program.
00:59:18.000So I kept looking, trying to figure it out.
00:59:21.000I'd get a month or so sober and then I'd fall off, something would fall apart, job would fall apart, relationship, I'd be right back out.
00:59:30.000And about 10, 11 months ago, I hit my rock bottom and I was spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally done, like broken.
00:59:44.000Picked up a pistol, was going to end my life, and my dog bumped the pistol out of my grip.
00:59:50.000And that was my aha moment that I still have purpose here.
00:59:55.000And so I reached back out to Dave and came down to Florida, started working on the program again, got about six and a half months completely sober.
01:01:19.000Pray, contact somebody in the program, a close friend, somebody at church, and just be open about it.
01:01:29.000Because when you confine and don't talk about stuff that you're dealing with, that's when it leaves the door open for resentment or these horrible thoughts when my stinking thinking starts taking off.
01:03:09.000I mean, you look a lot better, and it's a great testimony, but a lot of people are saying that the blowjobs have deteriorated in standards.
01:03:46.000Woe to those who quarrel with their maker, those who are nothing but pots herds among the pots herds on the ground, which I think means like clay pots.
01:03:56.000Does the clay say to the potter, what are you making?
01:04:00.000Does your work say the potter has no hands?
01:04:04.000That's amazing to question whether or not God knows what God's doing.
01:04:09.000Like, our maybe it's just, it's amazing they're sort of preceding and preempting the atheistic argument.
01:04:15.000Is your argument that there is no God, that we're just arbitrarily and randomly here, that the laws of the universe, not to mention the inner experience of being human, love, loss, grief, glory, all of the nuanced, peculiar stave of human emotions has just happened arbitrarily, the kind of blind watchmaker argument.
01:04:37.000And also, I suppose, Jake, what you're saying is that it's our job to recognize what he wants to use us for, and that that process, like it says in another of the objects or articles of faith of 12-step programs, is the 12 and 12, the 12 steps in the 12 traditions.
01:04:56.000And somewhere early in step seven, which is the one that Dave referred to, we humbly ask God to remove our defects of character, which is from a sort of a materialistic perspective.
01:05:08.000I mean, if you like, because there are obviously lots of people that use 12-step programs that are atheists, but I do wonder when it comes to something like humbly ask God to remove your defects of character, how you secularize that idea.
01:05:21.000And anyway, well, in step seven, it says, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful.
01:05:30.000And like the process of being shaped, molded, changed, changed from a person that worships the world, worships your identity, worships the false gods and false idols, whether that's fame, money, success, hierarchies, whatever it is that the world has put before you, to pull yourself, well not to pull yourself away from that, to be pulled from that.
01:05:55.000And I like a lot of the black humor that's in like 12-step literature.
01:06:00.000There's another piece that says, the decision as to whether to live a spiritual life or to die an alcoholic death is not an easy one to make.
01:06:42.000It's such a why my own beyond even my gratitude at having my life turned around from being someone chemically dependent to someone who is drug-free and alcohol free one day at a time.
01:06:55.000My fascination with the 12 steps is how it aligns perfectly with the principles of Christianity, how it's a kind of preparatory document.
01:07:06.000I'm not saying that people that aren't Christian that are 12 steps haven't had the full benefit.
01:07:11.000But what I'm astonished by is someone that's been exploring drug use, New Age ideas, meditation, as well as political ideas about corruption, hypocrisy, deception, institutional control, globalism.
01:07:28.000To find all of that in the Bible, as well as everything I experienced with the 12-step, things that I've spent a long time studying and experiencing, not to find alignment.
01:07:40.000Like, you know, I would never have gotten something like that Isaiah verse before.
01:07:45.000Like, I'd have just sort of thought that's do as you're told, is I'd have interpreted that.
01:07:49.000I'd have interpreted that as do as you're told.
01:07:51.000I wouldn't have seen that the clay is your consciousness, that you are made of something beyond even your flesh.
01:07:59.000There is a spiritual component to you that's being affected and changed by some unseen hand that is only knowable in ways that are difficult to describe.
01:08:10.000Yeah, and I think the other thought to consider is that the potter is good.
01:08:22.000Like when you were talking about that unconditional love and how that's hard to grasp and understand in your life, that's because sometimes you don't see the Father as good.
01:08:40.000So whenever you have an annihilation or this thought process of I want to just disappear from reality, drugs are probably a good God for that.
01:09:10.000I reckon then we should maybe let me know in the comments and chat what particular questions related to recovery and 12-step recovery you would like to see us respond to and discuss.
01:09:21.000If there's any parts of the literature of any all 12-step fellowships that you find particularly helpful or if there are any stories or challenges that you want to put before primarily me, Joe and Dave there.
01:09:36.000Rob, thank you very much for contributing and for your story.
01:10:00.000Thanks Massey for being with us mate and being the sort of the silent ever-present voice of atheism and thank you Jake for producing the show.
01:10:10.000Hey let's do the disclaimer again because I thought it was so beautiful when Jake played and Joe spoke.
01:10:15.000When Joe spake and Jake played it was a beautiful thing.
01:10:21.000We will be back on Wednesday with a regular live show where we'll be talking about the infernal, terrible, never-ending horror and hell of the global news cycle.