Topic: Awareness
Sober Cast: An (unofficial) Alcoholics Anonymous Podcast AA
October 18, 2026
Naomi C from Sheffield in the UK is sharing on the topic of Awareness at the Spiritual Cartel zoom meeting. Sober Cast has 3400+ episodes available, visit SoberCast.com to access all the episodes where you can easily find topics or specific speakers using tags or search.
Speakers Jason, Naomi C
TopicsMental HealthHealth & Fitness
Jason (0:06)
Hello, and welcome to Sober Cast, where we provide AA speaker meetings and workshops in podcast format. We're an ad-free podcast, and if you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by visiting sobercast.com, look for the donate link, and drop a dollar or two into our virtual basket. We hope you enjoy the podcast. Have a great day.
Naomi C (0:27)
Thanks, Jason. I do have a call to excuse my voice. Thank you, Spiritual Cartel, for having me. It's a real honor to be here and to have been asked, hello, everyone who's here. Thank you so much for coming. And whoever makes this meeting happen, it's incredible. I really appreciate you all. My name is Naomi. And I'm such, such a grateful, recovered, addict, alcoholic of the Hopeless variety.
I'm so grateful to be here.
I found you guys just over 40 months ago, and I crawled into these rooms completely broken, with nothing else to do than give my life to you guys.
I'm just going to read what the 11th principle of CA is. Awareness. Through regular inventory, we remain aware of our own motives, intentions, and behaviours. Now for me, to remain aware, I had to become aware. When I walked in here, like it said at the beginning of your meeting, I had no idea that my problems were of my own making. I walked in here full of everybody was the problem. I don't know what to do, but it's definitely not me that's the problem. I just know that I can't do life anymore, and I can't stop taking, drinking, anything, and it's killing me. That's what I came here with. What this process of the steps taught me was how to wake up. Because I came in here asleep. I came in here asleep to life. I came in here asleep to myself. I came in here asleep to God, to this power, to the divine. I wasn't connected to anything apart from death itself. Death itself barely warmed up was who I was.
And my first, for me, the first level of awareness came the last night of my using and drinking, when something happened inside of me. Something happened. And I woke up to how broken I was. But I woke up to the fact that I wanted to live. And I woke up to the fact that I actually realized there was nothing I could do about it anymore. I was out of ideas, I was out of resources, and you guys were my last hope. And when I came in here, an amazing woman took me through the book and took me through the steps. And I woke up to the fact that I'm the problem, my perception of life, my perception of myself, my perception of reality isn't real. I wasn't even living in any form of reality. Something happened to me. I became aware of my motives, of my selfishness and self-centeredness and my fears that drove me to behave in a way that always hurt other people, was killing me, was nearly at some point going to kill my son, and I'd probably end up killing someone else's child along the way. We were all God's children, now I understand that, why I was running around killing everybody. And I became aware of how I showed up in life. I became aware to the fact that I wasn't aware, and that blew my head off. I thought I was aware. I had moral convictions galore. I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything about anything. Never mind this power that created the universe, that has kept me alive, that has kept you all alive. And I just want to take a moment right now, and I invite you just to acknowledge the fact that you have a heartbeat right now. That blows my mind. Because if you're anything like me, the fact that we are alive right now, with each other in this moment, and have a solution to live is incredible.
That is incredible. How lucky are we? I am so grateful that I found you. But you know what? I didn't find anything. God brought me here. God brought me here. Something brought me here. I could not, for one instance, believe that this life or any of us was meant to be, where we just drink and use to death again. I don't believe that. How can I possibly believe that all of our beautiful little souls were created to just die in pain? We've all got a purpose. I know that in my being, I have a purpose. I woke up to that purpose. Trust God, clean house, help others. That's my purpose. The process of these steps opened my eyes to the fact that I have no power and no control over myself, over life. And do you know what? I don't want it. I don't want it, because when I'm in charge, it's a disaster. But what's happened is immensely more beautiful. This process of seeing the truth and then connecting to something that's way bigger than me, is way bigger than I could ever have imagined. And in every moment of every day, by practicing the principles of these steps, every single moment of every single day, I can be free, and that's the choice. I can choose to turn my life to this program every moment of every day. That bit's not easy for me because I don't do it every single moment of every day, because I'm still an addict. But I have an amazing toolkit now of being able to choose whether I turn my life and my will over to something that has way better plans for me and for you than I could ever imagine.
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