 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, Alhamdulillahirrahim. Wa salatu wa salam ala ashraf al-anbiya wa al-mursaleen. Sayyidina Muhammad wa al-Ali wa sahb al-ajma'in. Allahumma alimna ma yinfaa'una wa wa fa'inabimma al-lamtana. Wa zidna al-ma nafya'an wa ba'at. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, he said a faithful believer to a faithful believer is like a bricks of a wall or like a building enforcing each other. Ka'bunyan, ya shuddu ba'uduhu ba'udah. And then he clasped his hands and interlaced his fingers. And this is Nerid and Sahih al-Bukhari. What's interesting is the importance of group work in our Dean or being in a group in our Dean. And we've been talking about social networks. And this is something that is highlighted within our Dean as well. And if you just look at the month of Ramadan, it's a really great way to experience that and feel that. Part of the reason why Ramadan is so helpful and there's so much of a momentum is because everybody's doing it. Everybody's fasting more, everybody's praying more. You go to the masjid, there's just an energy and a momentum and a wave that we're just able to ride. I mean, if you look at just a month ago, the things that we're doing and accomplishing on our own individually, I couldn't even imagine perhaps putting in the time, the effort, the lack of sleep, the schedule on my own, but just seeing other people doing it, getting reinforced that other people are doing it. It's a really great reminder of how important people are in order for us to really achieve things that we wouldn't have normally been able to achieve. So in the past couple of sessions, we've been talking about social networks and how to leverage those. And one of the most beautiful things about Ramadan is it gives us a taste. One of those things it gives us a taste of is of course the sweetness of how sweet our Dean can be if everything lines up. But then also one of the things that gives us a taste of is how far we can go if we leverage that group dynamic. And it's not only in Ramadan, this is in all the five pillars of our Dean. So if you look at Salah, the Pafsal Salam encouraged us to pray Salah in groups. He told us that the one who prays alone is like the solitary sheep. There's no three people in a town who pray where prayer is not established, but Shatharra, Shatharra, who pray where prayer is not established, but Shatharra takes control of them. So he told us stick to the congregation for the wolf eats the sheep that strays off on its own. So what's interesting to me about this is the emphasis just being placed in our spiritual practices of not only doing it individually, but doing it in a group. And we know the prayer is more rewarded in a group. So that's fasting, that's Salah. Zakat requires us to have a network in order to properly execute that pillar. Hajj uses the momentum of groups in order to experience Hajj. Groups are so incredible to provide us the energy in order to take us forward. What we go over in this chapter is how to use social supports in order to advance what we're doing. So we left off at practicing a sort of communication last session. And then now we're going into saying no to offers of alcohol or drugs. And then after that, we go into expanding your social network. So this is like expanding your social network so that you can use the group dynamic in order to help with staying alcohol and drug-free. A lot of us just struggle with trying to stay drug-free until we find the right group. And the reason why that happens is we're oftentimes just trying to do it on our own individually, and that can be really challenging. Another way to look at it is the group is the missing component in order to gain success. So if you look in recovery work, there's such a high emphasis put in groups. And today that's what we'll go over, inshallah, with the Recovery Skills Workbook, page 76 of the book. So one of the things it starts talking about in this section is saying no to offers of alcohol or drugs. We might think that's an easy thing, but a lot of studies show that sort of practicing that beforehand and just strengthening your no muscle before you go into a situation where you feel like you might be pressured is helpful. So some of the bullet points they go to in terms of how to say no to offers of alcohol or drugs, how to say no to drugs is the first bullet point is the first thing to say in response to an offer is no or no thank you in a serious tone. And I think that's the important part I wanted to highlight about this first bullet point, saying it in a serious tone. And that's what they say in terms of refusal skills. Using a serious tone is an incredibly important way to have that request be taken seriously. Second bullet point is make eye contact when you say no. The third bullet point is try to ask for something else instead. Like no thank you, do you have sparkling water or something else to drink or no thank you, do you want to do something else instead? Maybe we go out and do X, Y and Z or no thanks, I'm hungry though. Do you want to go out and get something to eat? Or one of the next bullet points is ask the person not to offer you alcohol or drugs anymore. And then the last bullet point is have a dialogue with yourself about it. Remind yourself why you're in recovery and why recovery is so important. So that's the last section about dealing with difficult support networks. And I want to talk a little bit about a study. This is a really interesting study that came out in the New England Journal of Medicine. A study that looked at 12,000 people from 1971 to 2003. So it's almost like this really rare snapshot into human behavior. If you can imagine 200 years ago there's just no way to do a study like this of 12,000 people over 30 years. The amount of coordination organization that needs to be put into place in order to make this happen. So it's really interesting to be able to see this. What they did was they used social networks to look at clusters of people and they found that they looked at eating habits basically. And long story short, they found that a person's chance of becoming obese, they looked at obesity, increased by 57% if they had a friend who had become obese in a given interval. So it's not like one person with an eating problem found another person in an eating problem. They were able to look over a long period of time and see that if one person developed an eating problem later on the next person in that social network would develop an eating problem. And that's what's so interesting about this study. So that's if they had a friend, 57% chance of developing an eating problem increased if they had a friend that developed an eating problem. And the other relationship they looked at was siblings. So the chance that the other person would become obese increased by 40% and then a spouse. So the chance that a spouse would become obese increased by 37%. So what was interesting about this is that as we close this section up about how social support networks can be helpful or harmful, really recognizing how strong that can be using this data. The last thing I'll point out about this article is one of the things I said was network phenomena might be exploited to spread health behaviors. So just like it can be used, the group dynamic can be used to spread harmful behaviors. It can also be used to spread healthy behaviors and helpful behaviors. All right, so I'm gonna go back to the text. Now it talks about instead of avoiding negative networks it talks about expanding your social network. And this is pretty interesting. In exercise 4.6, it talks about how do you identify people who could be good safety nets or good members of your support network? And so it talks about different quality traits that you want in people. So this also answers the question of how do I know if my support person, my counselor, my therapist, my sponsor is a good person for me. Because in the end of the day it's humans being humans. So here's the qualities that they bring up. Not actively drinking or using of course. They're good at listening, respectful, non-judgmental, trustworthy, kind, patient, willing to make time for you. You can have the greatest person but if they don't have time, it may not be helpful, protective of you and your recovery. And it goes on to more qualities. I'm gonna fast forward and it wraps up with talking about self-help groups. So self-help groups are the most widely available resource for people who wanna build a support network and recovery. There's 12 step groups like alcoholics, anonymous, narcotics anonymous, and then there's many different offshoots of 12 step groups based on substance, marijuana anonymous and many other substances as well. There's also other groups like smart recovery, refuge recovery and there's many, many, many other groups. We just compiled a list of groups this week on one of the teams I work with and it was like two to three pages long of just the different types of groups. And that's a limited list. So there's many different groups. The 12 step groups are the most widely available groups in the United States and many, many countries. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about this because the recovery skills workbook goes over this. So the first bullet point and those of us that are like entrenched in going to meetings and groups, it's a good reminder to help strengthen that. One of the things I heard this week that was really helpful is in order to avoid complacency, it can be helpful to try new groups. Because if you go to the same group, the same meeting, you're hearing the same thing, the same people, it can be helpful to try another group, another meeting to avoid complacency, to mix things up, to keep things fresh because this is a journey, a marathon. First bullet point they go over is some people like, so they talk about 12 step meetings because they're the most widely available. Some people like AA and other 12 step groups and others don't and that's completely fine. It's not for everybody, but for those who get something out of it, there's a potential for great benefits. The second bullet point that they mentioned is really important. You don't have to agree with everything you hear in a 12 step group for it to be helpful. What they say is the social support that is at the core of the group is the therapeutic benefit. So even if the 12 steps themselves are not helpful to you, just getting connected with other people in recovery is likely to be therapeutic in itself. So just the fact that it's this platform to connect with other people in recovery and find like-minded people and then within that group of like-minded people find people that you can start making members of your team that alone is the core therapeutic benefit. And so of course there's gonna be things about a book written many, many, many decades ago and a program that was developed many, many decades ago that we're all not going to be able to resonate with. I don't think there's anybody that resonates with everything in those groups, but being able to take what's helpful is the key. The third bullet point they mentioned is try going to lots of different meetings. Most people need to attend several different meetings before they find the one that feels good. So there's speaker meetings. Speaker meetings are good for newcomers as well because the group meeting can be anxiety provoking, especially being around a bunch of different people and maybe feeling like you have to bury your soul to people that are strangers. Speaker meetings are good because you can just listen and listen to the individuals talk about their experience to the group. Then there's other meetings like step study meetings and all different types of meetings. And then of course you can get involved beyond just attending. So you can get a sponsor, work the steps, so on and so forth. I wanted to talk about an important study that came out after this book was published. This is a Cochrane review that came out in 2020 and it looked over 27 studies. It was about 11,000 people in those studies. And it looked at AA and 12 step facilitation and it compared it to CBT and other therapy modalities, motivational therapies. And what they found was 12 step interventions performed at least as well as the other comparisons in all outcomes except for one outcome which was abstinence or sobriety. When it came to sobriety, it outperformed the other treatments. And Cochrane reviews are one of the most rigorous types of reviews without getting too technical, it's good data. So the bottom line is they studied 11,000 people and it works in human beings. And again, the way I look at data and studies is if I need to find the stock that I'm gonna invest in, I wanna look at the stock that was successful for the most amount of people. So if I find a stock was helpful for 11,000 people versus another stock that's unknown and just started a couple of years ago or something like that, I'm gonna go into the stock that works because the stakes are high. We are investing our lives into this. That's important to know. And then they also look at studies, look at what components of 12 step programs work. And they find that people that get a sponsor that's associated with better outcomes and not getting a sponsor working four or more steps is associated with better outcomes and not working the steps. Commitments, doing commitments is associated with better outcomes and not making commitments, so on and so forth. There's also smart recovery. Smart recovery is CBT based. It just compiles the latest and greatest science out there into a program and there's many other groups as well. I'm gonna go back into the wrap up. The wrap up goes over the conclusion of the whole section that we just went over over three or four sessions. So it summarizes what we've done. We started with making our environment safe and free from triggers. That's the first thing we went over. Then we started to think about creating a recovery mindset about your day-to-day decisions. Recovery's not drink or don't drink, shugs or no drugs. Recovery is in our day-to-day decisions. Every decision, every thought we choose to entertain and allow into our house, that's the battleground. It's not after the thoughts have overwhelmed us that we are now fighting. It's every single thought that we choose to allow in. Then we talked about making sure we're not setting ourselves up for relapse without realizing it and making sure that we're setting ourselves up for recovery. Then we talked about rethinking our relationships is what we've been going over more recently, figuring out who's good for our recovery, who's not good. And we talked about adjusting our communication style. Then we talked about how to join new organizations and talked about self-help meetings. So that's this section. The next section, we talk about how to become a self-expert so that we can understand our own personal ways of thinking and how that can set us up for success or relapse. So now we're talking about, before we were talking about really general things, some of us, these are a reminder and we're already doing much of this work. Others, it's a nudge to maybe strengthen our commitment to do some of that work. And for others, perhaps it's just an introduction. And these are sort of like the basic components of being able to be able to call ourselves working on recovery almost. Now we're gonna go into how do we become a self-expert? What are our own individual tricks that we play on ourselves? And this is gonna require first and foremost like rigorous honesty. And that's a hard thing to do for people, not just people in recovery or with addiction, just people in general. And one way to do that is to write things down on paper. But one thing I'll say about rigorous honesty is it's incredibly exciting. And if you can stay curious about yourselves and just totally kill the judgment and just reserve it for a moment and just stay curious about yourselves, it can be really exciting. The crazy that goes on in our head, really learning about it and uncovering it. And then start working on now, how do we face that and unravel that and work on that? And share it with others because a lot of times what we see in ourselves is something that others will resonate with and encourage them to speak up on. Anybody have any questions, comments?