Speaker 1Today I want to talk about a very helpful pamphlet I read in Hazelden Treatment Center when I was there in 2015. It's called King Baby and basically it talks about the alcoholic addict and the disease of perception and the person who, I just, when I read this in that treatment center, it really changed the way, it made me realize that I wasn't a victim and that I was the problem. This pamphlet really helped me reframe how I looked at my problem and I always say, what is my problem? My problem is me. My problem is not drugs and alcohol. My problem, it was a symptom that drugs and alcohol were a symptom of my disease and my disease is I am stuck in my perception. I cannot get out of self. Alcoholism is a disease of more. It is also a disease of hyper self-awareness, a disease of self-obsession and if you aren't there yet with understanding this, that's okay. I'm going to only talk about me. I'm a selfish person by nature and I use drugs and alcohol to cope with my brain, my thoughts. They helped me escape my craziness in my head. This is my experience. So hopefully this will help you understand the disease of alcoholism a little bit more. I just love this so much and I really wanted to do an episode about it. So let's get into it. My name is Anthony. I'm an alcoholic and addict. I'm in recovery, been in recovery since 2015, had a relapse at about seven and a half years on steroids, secrets, ADHD medication. And today I'm back bringing the content to you. So I want you to picture this. Grown adult. Full meltdown because the world said no. Like a kid in a Toys R Us, not getting the toys they want. There's a two-year-old still running some of my decisions. And for years he was picking up the drink, the drug. Today we meet his majesty, the baby. Who is King Baby? We all start here. Infant, center of the universe. Every need met instantly. No waiting. So I want you to think about a child. In your life, I'm thinking about my niece when you're around that child, do they get all the attention? Do they get all the praise, all the eyes, the, when the child comes into the room, does everybody not focus their attention completely on the kid? A lot of us have had that experience our whole lives. We are the center of the universe. We are the most important thing in the room at all times. All the focus and attention is on us. We get whatever we want. We get all the attention. Imagine what that does to your brain. Imagine if somebody did that to you today. That's why celebrities, this is how celebrities feel. How does that not stroke your ego, build your ego? A child is born of pure love, joy, God, whatever you want to call it, pure spirit. And then they go on through life, picking up all of these conditionings, all this conditioning. The world conditions us to be a certain way, to feel, act a certain way, and it starts by being the center. center of the universe feeling like we are the center and this is essentially what alcoholism is most people grow out of it some of us just never shed it we don't so cunningham's idea that infant ego never forgets the warmth and spends a lifetime trying to get it back that is the whole premise of this pamphlet this book the infant ego never forgets the warmth and love and attention and spends a whole lifetime trying to get it back and obviously failing at the end of the day i think drugs and alcohol give that attention to us and that's why a lot of us get addicted is because for a long time alcohol and drugs were my best friend they made me feel a part of made me feel like the center of the universe made me feel like i was you okay in my own skin everywhere i went all the time until it stops working i want you to think about this where in your life do i do you still expect the world to move on your schedule where in your life are you still expecting people to follow your script i do this all the time i can be a sheriff of the universe and this is my biggest problem is i'm right you're wrong yeah but i know in traffic people aren't following my rules they're not living according to my script they're not driving the way i want them to drive it transfers into so many areas of my life i can't even i don't even have time in a podcast episode to tell you when somebody isn't following the social law outside or anthony's law how dare they cough at the gym all over the equipment and then not wipe it down after oh my god and then i look around and nobody else is bothered how dare they take an hour on the treadmill when they're only supposed to take 20 minutes how dare the people in my building that aren't residents i'm sure of it they're renters or they're airbnb guests and they're not supposed to be using the gym i'm right it's all about me and my script i'm the actor director i'm the lights guy i'm i want to be everybody all the time if you can relate to that you're not alone okay i think a lot of us can maybe you can't maybe you're just not being honest about it i don't know the characteristics of king baby the book lists 23 traits i'm not going to read all 23 but i can cluster them into four i actually lived the control ones so i play the authority figure against each other rules are for other people i have to be right all the time there's this sheriff of the universe right the approval ones great first impression can't follow through loses himself trying to be liked all the time this stage character i'm presenting to the world the all or nothing ones everything's black or white everything's a catastrophe driven to extremes i'm living in superlatives it's not good or bad it's best or worst the buried ones the chronic complainer the lonely and lonely in a crowd holds the pain in until he can't feel anything none of us have all of these but i bet you can find a few that you that have your name all over them i found more than a few the frightened child underneath so plot twist king baby isn't the villain he's the bodyguard underneath the loud demanding one is a scared kid who decided he didn't measure up i'm not enough two engines are running at once the child who doesn't want to get hurt again and the king baby who's never satisfied never full where the chemicals come in so the designer version of ourselves fastly the high all of it solving a void that never fills the games slash the masks we invent a character so the real one can't get rejected i'm bringing a stage character to the world because i don't want you to see the real me cunningham names a bunch the popular one be everything to everyone nobody ever meets the real you the perfectionist worthless unless i'm the best nobody's the best forever i talk about that a lot in the perfectionist episode i'm always trying to live up to this impossible ideal this perfect version of myself the martyr mistakes pity for love keeps suffering to feel loved the rebel tell me no and i'll do it twice keeps collecting the consequences every mask runs on a lie if i do x you'll finally love me and every mask has an ending you ever wore a mask before in a certain setting trying to be the strong guy in one area the funny guy in another area because i'm afraid you won't love the real me so i need to act like the person that you'll love that i think you'll love it all comes back to codependence at the end of the day i need you to love me for me to love myself i need you to be okay for me to be okay i need you to be happy content for me to be happy content the vicious circle why it speeds up addiction king baby can't tolerate calm things start to go well we need to rock the boat start a crisis the chaos is useful it hides the shrinking self-worth if i have chaos in my life i am stimulated i'm not focusing on all my inadequacies i'm not focusing on all this pain because there's constantly something to get control of there's the boat is rocking all the time and i'm the one rocking the boat i'm self-sabotaging because i need chaos in my life i need bumpiness i need extremes so that i don't have to focus on the real work the inner work cuttingham's hard claim the high recreates the infant worth warmth the exact thing the equals ego has been chasing so if i can create chaos i'll get attention i'll get love because my life is so bad i need self-pity right i need help poor me i'm the victim so the two combine and the descent gets faster the bottom comes quicker than it did for the generation before hitting the wall sick and tired of being sick and tired the scheming just stops working the manipulating the finagling it just stops it becomes exhausting and you're not getting the results that you want and that in of itself is exhausting. It's frustrating. The ego's last stand. I can do this myself. I don't need help. The turn. I can't, we can. This is the solution. Somebody who's been there reaches back and says, if I can, you can. If I can get sober, anyone can get sober. And I firmly believe that. If you want what we have, you have to do what we did. So I had to find someone that had what I wanted, serenity, peace, sobriety, and I did what they did. That's it. Simple, not easy. The way out. Surrender doesn't equal losing. It's putting down a job you were never qualified for,
Speaker 2running the universe. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets...
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Speaker 1The sheriff of the universe. If everyone just fit my plan, all would be well. It's always about me and my plan. And I assume everybody feels the same way. Yeah, my plan would work for everyone because you agree with my plan. Most people really don't. Healing the kid. So walk into that room, sit with the scared child, tell him that he's safe. Self-love before you feel lovable. The rooms love you first. The community loves you first. Your counselor loves you first. You catch up. We will love you before you can love yours, until you can love yourself. Sorry. Humility, not lower, not higher, equal. To be teachable, flexible, maybe. I'm wrong. Maybe there's another way to look at this. Maybe I don't have all the answers. Maybe I don't need to have everything figured out. Redirect the wiring. We've got the addiction setting. Point it at something that keeps us alive. Movement, a craft, service, purpose. Maybe starting a social media platform, podcast. Maybe just simply helping others. Watch the trap. New romance tour. Early equals king baby using a person like a drug. Recovery goes on hold. Yeah. We use people like drugs. And that's why they say in early recovery, don't get into a relationship because you don't even know who the hell you are. And to be honest, don't take this the wrong way, but I didn't really have much to offer in early recovery because I was still finding out who the hell I was. How can I show up in a relationship if I haven't done the work on myself? I don't know all the things that drive me. I don't know who I am. I don't even love myself. How can I love you? King baby. So I want you to picture it this way. You got king baby. You have a headset on headphones. You got king baby in one ear, that child that wants warmth, love and attention and everything to go their way. And then you got the program in the other ear. So whatever your program is, your recovery is in the other ear. You choose the channel. Handle it my way turns into let go and let God. I can't, we can. Point out when everyone else is wrong. You take your own inventory. Look at your mistakes. Stop playing the victim card. Little white lies are fine. Turns into it's an honest program. Just be honest. Accept the results to go come no matter what. Just focus on honesty principles. Justify the grudge turns into not carrying resentments. The thing that'll kill you time and time again. King baby is still in there. He doesn't drive my bus anymore. It doesn't drive the bus. The gratitude turn. He can. Don't get me wrong. I can be the sheriff of the universe. I go back to that a lot because I want all the attention. I want to be right. I want to be the best sometimes. And I don't like being wrong. My ego doesn't like being wrong. So king baby ego, watch for that. It'll take you down because then it turns into resentments. If I'm wrong, then I'm resentful about the person that I made feel to be wrong about. This pamphlet pamphlet is online. I'll post a link in the show notes, but I highly recommend reading it. It just speaks to me so much. It really identifies my main problem. And my main problem is my ego. My main problem is I'm right. My main problem is I know close mindedness at the end of the day. When I relapsed, my life got really big and I attributed all my success to me and it was all me and my failures. I would outsource my failures to you and the universe. And I would take all the glory for my, success, which is not the case. None of this has to do with me. I have to put in the work and do the do things. But at the end of the day, the results are up to the universe, to God. I don't control the outcomes and I could never get sober on my own. I have my recovery community to thank, to give the glory to. I have my recovery program to give the glory to. And I just show up and put in the daily actions. I am not responsible for the outcomes. I am not responsible for my success. And that's a hard concept to grasp. If you are a striver like me, if you are someone that goes after and gets life and gets things done and puts in the work, leave the outcomes up to the universe. It's not all about me today. It can be. And I certainly fall back into that behavior. And that King baby is roaring sometimes. And I want to be right. But I'll ask you this. Would you rather be right or free? I want to be free today. I don't need to be right all the time. I just want to be free. I want freedom. I want peace. I want serenity. I want peace of mind. I want sobriety. I want to love people. I want to be a giver today, not a taker. All of that is on offer here in recovery. Don't ignore the King baby. Don't ignore your ego. Acknowledge it. Treat it with love. But it doesn't have to drive the bus today. It doesn't have to run the show. You are not the sheriff of the universe. I am not the sheriff of the universe. I am not the bringer of justice. I don't get to decide when justice, where and when justice gets I like to think that I do. It's not up to me. If no one has told you this yet, I love you. And remember, recovery is simple.
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