The Disease of Alcoholism – Church Book Study – Part 1 of 5 – Bob A.

Hi Bob, so we got a meeting put together tonight, so it would probably be best for me to talk more about the disease alcoholism and to be introducing myself and what the purpose is of being here tonight instead of going through any kind of rigmarole. Can we open this up with a serenity prayer? God, grant me the strength to accept the things that I cannot change. The courage to face the things I can't and accept another difference. You know, starting back at originally for me in Alcoholics Anonymous is that I came here from a hospital, an alcoholic hospital. And then from a period of time, which went into some years, is that I had a sponsor that was a step-man and a God-man. And I tried and I listened and I tried to do many things. But the thing about it was that at that time was I read a great deal in as far as steps are concerned in Alcoholics Anonymous. the actual you know the big book then and uh the disease of alcoholism I never knew nothing of I just knew a great deal about alcohol and I knew a Great Deal about living a life with alcohol and everything was based and everything centered around yesterday's life where I came from and then when I got into Alcoholics Anonymous is that I tried to do and be all of the things that I wanted or thought I should be, according to what was going on. And, you know, in them days, meetings were more of talking about drunk-a-logs, more of yesterdays, of the drinking years. And so I went along with that, and I went along with that some time. So for two and a half years, I went to meetings and I did not drink. I listened a great deal. I read a great deal. And I had much going on in my life because I wasn't given the bartender of my money. And I started working. I was a line mechanic and I started showing up for work and I started living a life like that. In fact, in 1954, in March 1954, I bought a GI house out in Canoga Park. And can you imagine? You know, 1954. And then I had only been sober two years. And then I bought it. I bought the GI house and then I bought a new car and so on like that and I thought everything was the way it should be because that's the way I took it. I just, I went along with each day because I was sober and I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and I lived the life that I thought was right. But what I didn't realize, though, and I didn' t hear and I did' n know anything at all about what was wrong with me. I never once ever questioned that as far as something that should be looked at or considered because I would do exactly what my sponsor said and what everybody else said, too. I was going to meetings, I didn't drink I read the book, I had a sponsor I did all things according to what I heard and I thought that staying sober was the name of the game, I really did I believe that especially when I read out of the big book in the first 164 pages I had an author who wouldn't let me read after page 164 he didn't want me going into into the story. He wanted me to stay in what he considered the recovery program. So I thought at the time that I was fulfilling and I was doing everything the way it should be done. And for me, I had a sponsor that was a God man, a step man. He was a true God man. He spoke of nothing but the grace of God all the time. And he related everything to this God and he talked a great deal about this God and uh but you see that was his god and that was his eyes and his life and i uh i started to pick up on things uh myself out of my life that there was something wrong but i didn't know what this here something was and this something wrong business was the day i lived in with the day I couldn't live in and I was sober and see I come from a world of drunkenness of being drunk drunken behavior all kinds going down to the depths of hell and I knew this life well because it was a rat race it was a life that I lived and so I knew I knew that the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program was 12 steps I knew that it said chapter in them days it wasn't even on page 58 my book only had 400 pages So I knew that how it worked, Chapter 5, was they were saying things in there that I agreed with, but they were things that I didn't know nothing about. I didn' t have any awareness of what was wrong. I started realizing as I was going to meetings that there were certain characters, certain guys around. And I have lived in AA all these years. And I knew that there were certain guys around at certain times. They had something, they said something, they looked different, their eyes were different, their life, what they talked about, the way they were. I knew there was something there that I didn't know nothing about. I had no idea about this. Now, the reason I said about the house and that, I bought the GI house in 54 and I bought a new car in 55 right off the showroom floor, was that I was starting to come into a world now where this world that I Was in was a world that l knew. l knew this world real well. l knew This rat race world. l knew how to retaliate. l knew How to look at things, and things didn't look too good to me, and things were always the same. l was the same man sober as l was drunk, and l knew that. l lived like that. l thought like that I drove my car like that. Everything that I looked at, eventually, if I looked long enough, hard enough at it, it was wrong. It would turn wrong. It would be wrong. I would have to do things that I didn't want to do. I would Have to answer to people that I Didn't Want to Answer to them. I'd look at my wife the same way I always looked at her. And yet she was the same wife I took through the drinking years, which I beat her every way you could beat a woman. and I was still looking at her with that same brain them same eyes the same hearing the same everything going on and in in the in the doctor's opinion in the big book where Dr. Silkworth is talking about how alcoholics are they drink for the effect they're restless irritable and discontent until they drink again well that I could agree with but I didn't know nothing about this only as what it said it was restless irritable discontented And that was me. And what he was describing there, and what I didn't know about, and what was needed was the disease of alcoholism. You see, I thought that was an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic with alcoholism now. That I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous. I got a piece of paper from a hospital that says I'm an alcoholic, and they locked me up, and they strapped me down. And I won't argue. I never did quarrel with the first half of step one where it says I admit that I'm powerless over alcohol. But that's all, no more than that. So this here life now that I was living in was the same life that I always lived in before except that it didn't have any booze in it or drunken behavior, but it was the same life and yet you see I didn't understand or didn't know or wasn't told I couldn't get it, that there's something wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with me. And what this something wrong with me is, it's talked about in the second chapter in The Solution and it talks in there about something that it's still only words until it becomes something that's needed in my life that I can have or change or do something different. It's talking in here about the alcoholic and it's talking about the observation would be academic and pointless if our friend never took their first drink thereby setting a terrible cycle in motion. Therefore the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than his body. And you see, I thought at the time that just what I'm talking about was because I drank, because I had a lifetime of drinking, of going through drunken behavior and so on like that, but I couldn't explain away the life that I had now without the drink. And so what I'm taking about now is how I had to find a way so that could know and see and have about alcoholism what the hell am I doing here just exactly what am i doing here I came here over 39 years ago and for the first two and a half years I had no idea I had no conception of a performance of an application of living daily that I must do. I personally must do. Only me. Because I don't know how to do that. I don t even have an idea. I think that I can have a thought in my mind and act upon that thought and be right and do the right thing regardless of what happens, whether it's going to hurt you or hurt me or hurt anybody. I thought that I'm entitled because I'm not drinking and I'm not drunk to say what I'm going to say and do what I've got to do regardless and I can't I've gotta mind I have to understand something about me I'm only talking about me now I'm talking about a brain I'm talking about of mine that's in my body and this mind is the authority I use for my life I use this I actually honestly sincerely talk to this authority and I I get the okay to treat you any way I want to treat you, to consider you any way I wanna consider you, regardless of who you are. I live in a world where I draw from my brain about how that world is going and behaving and going on. And I get mixed up. I get confused. I get in the picture there and I want to change it. I want it different. And I want And so this was an introduction now to the disease of alcoholism. This was only a beginning. This here was a piecemeal project for me because I kept losing it. I kept going the other direction. I kept doing what I was doing. I kept on going back to self. I'd leave a meeting, and after I left the meeting, I would be another person again. I would see the same character I've always been all my life, for all my lives. But while I was at the meeting I started feeling good. I started realizing and seeing things and feeling great but I didn't know what was going on I didn' t know why I just lived like that if you were a speaker up here and I was going to this meeting and you were telling me about a lifetime of hell because of drunkenness and now a lifetime of beautiful life I would feel really good I'd get all pumped up I'd feel like a million bucks just because you were happy and you had things going for you And I was, but I didn't realize that the disease of alcoholism in my mind allowed me to have something come into that mind or something be different, away from self. I didn'T know a great deal about who I was. Self, meaning me. I didn' t know anything about ego and I had to find out about ego because I got a disease of alcoholicism and it's my mind. You know, in step two, in your 12 by 12, at the end of step two and it's talking in here they're talking about if you indeed are the practicing alcoholic who have any idea how rational they are or see in their irrationality can bear to face that some of each will be willing to turn themselves problem drinkers but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill well that's what I thought see I thought I was only a drunk I just had a drinking problem. I thought that when you don't drink and you live in a world that I was living in, having the things that I Was having, that's the way the world is. That's the Way the Pickle Swords. That's The Way the Mop Flops and all that kind of stuff. So you accept that. You go on from there and you just keep trying to do better. Meaning well. I wanted to mean... You know, I meant well even when I Was drunk. Now I'm sober and I really mean well because I see a lot of things that I couldn't see when I was blind with the eyes and blind with alcohol. But I'm sober. And so I would start out meaning well, I'd want to do well, I'd even talk to myself better than I talked to myself when I was drunk about laying out something ahead of time before it happened so that I could give you an explanation of a behavior or a happening or something like that and it's going to make it all right. The disease of alcoholism is a mind that I have in my body that really gets ready for anything and everything ahead of times. It really does. It even does that today. It figures out ahead of Time what's going to happen and how severe it's going to get and what you need to do and how you need to say it how you need to perform so you get it down pat it hasn't even happened yet but you're getting ready for it and after you get ready for it you don't realize that the disease of alcoholism is what's happening to you it's untreated you're using self again you're losing a mind that's perverse in every damn way willfully perverse in every damn way you can think of that just operates strictly by itself, that it controls me. If the life I see out there is strictly only by my brain, by the way the concept of what I see or feel or affect me, that I perform and I do things according to what my mind tells me. And this here is the basis of where I come from. I don't know that I got something wrong with this mind. It's got defects of character in it. These defects have got to be brought out even before I even or in step four even but I'm going to have to find out who I am. I have to find out Who I am because I can't follow directions when I don't know what's wrong. I can' t follow directions when I do not know what is needed. This here now became the dilemma that is talked about on page 45 in your big book about lack of power was my dilemma but how was I going to find this power? Now they are talking about something I don' t even know that word I don´t even know the word power because what it stands for the disease of alcoholism I accepted the disease the word disease as a disease of alcoholism because of what it says in step one the first half that it's an allergy to the body coupled with an obsession of the mind and I could accept that because I did go through that I did hit bottom and I know it is like to hit bottom when your life leaves you and everybody leaves you you get fired you're broke you can't go anywhere you can' do anything no more you're totally totally out and out in left field with no help. And the bottom I hit was the bottom is when I called for help from a, from my sponsor at Stevens. And so but this is only information because there's an ego factor. There's a, there's a power that lies inside of me and this where it lies is in my brain, is in my value system, it's in everything I use. In this ego now, I I didn't find out about until 1957, and that's when the Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age book was printed. And in there is Dr. Thiebaud, and it's where medicine looks at AlcoholicsAnonymous. And this is where I found out a little about, started to find out a Little About My Behavior and About Me, who I am, actually who I Am. Not who I say I am or who I was, but who I AM to the day I'm in. And this is when I started having now some information being supplied that I needed to have because I couldn't explain my behavior. I've been sober now. This was in 1957 when this ego factored. There's some things before that, but this is talking about strictly the ego. So I already have going for five years in AA. In five years back then, my sponsor, when I yelled for help, had nine years. He came in December 1943, I came in December 1952. So he had nine years. And this nine years that he had, he was all, I was looking at that man, that sponsor, that man. That character. I was looking at him from the nine-year statute or the nine year limit period there, that after nine years I can have what he has. I can be like he does. I can perform like he's performing and so forth. So I didn't understand then the disease of alcoholism and about self. How self will always protect self, how self will always hide self, self will also figure out ahead of time what's best for itself. So we're getting... I was getting into the more about an awareness about the disease of Alcoholism. Now you see in the beginning and for some years this kind of stuff that I'm talking about now I don't want to hear that I don' t want to hear a damn thing about this. I don´t want to even listen to any of this. Now there was a lot of guys around at that time that knew the importance of more than just surprise. There was a lot of them around that talked about a lot things that I could not hear and I didn't have the opportunity then to be able to sit and listen, specifically listen, to something that I need for my life so badly that you can't believe it because you see, I'm sober and I have been sober for some years but I'm living in the same world that I've always lived in and that world, I can't live in that world, it turns on me too much. It does things to me that I can't tolerate. I go to bed at night and I can' t sleep. I go to bed a night and have to relive everything I said or did that day because I hurt somebody. I have to re-live and re-think and reexperience something that went down that day where I took control, where I decided it should be another way. I had to punish people. I I had to show people how wrong they were. Now, these people I'm talking about could be anybody. They could be somebody that was very close to me, my wife. I loved her. I dearly did. It could be someone at work, a boss, a guy I'm working with, working alongside another mechanic. Could be somebody on the freeway. Could be my neighbor. Could be anybody, but I didn't know what was wrong. I didn' t understand that I've got something inside of me, not inside of them because I kept looking the same way I looked at this world. I kept working and I kept looking at this world out there with the world and I keep looking out there because what I seen was I seen you all the time regardless of who you were. You were acting funny. You were doing funny. You were saying things funny. You shouldn't do that. Things were bothering me that you were doing and I didn't like it and if I had the opportunity I would try to fix it or changed, I would try to do something about it. If I couldn't do anything about it, I had to live with it. And if I had lived with it a minute, it was already there, it was in my brain, and I won't forget it. And I'll look at you every day of your life and my life together from that point on, remembering how you acted, what you said, how I think less of you now because you acted crazy yesterday or yesterday or a year or a month or whatever. That means anybody now. I didn't know that the disease of alcoholism, in Alcoholics Anonymous, being sober, going to meetings, reading, having a sponsor and sincerely trying, meaning well, I didn' t know that the disease alcoholism is a growing thing. It's a cumulative, it's an adding thing all the time that as I get sober away from the drunken stage and a drunken drinking that my mind still goes the same direction it did when I was loaded with the juice. Now this is hard to accept this. This is a concept that I couldn't buy at the time but it was very evident in my life. It was very evidence in my own life what was happening into my life because you see I had these possessions that I thought would fix me. I had the house, the car, the wife, the clothes and everything else going for me but I still felt cheated I felt left out I felt that you had more than I had I really felt this you know I was envious of people jealous of people I didn't even know these people but I felt that inside it controlled me it governed my day it made me who I've always been but I can't I just don't know this though and I don't think that this has anything to do with Alcoholics Anonymous I don't think this has anything to do with anything other than just the way they are. That's the way you have to learn to live. You have to accept life on life's terms and all that. No damn way will I do that today. This year, I talk like this all the time because, you see, I lived that way for a long time. I was like that for a Long Time. And when they said to me, Anderson, all you have do is come to age, get the big book, don't drink, go to meetings, sit down, listen, and you're going to be all right. You'll be a winner. Listen, after you go so many years, you're not a winner, you know damn well there's something wrong with it, you know dam well, at least I did anyway, that I didn't have the right to do, to think, to act, to be who I was because that food was wrong instead of it being you or them or anybody else like that. And what's this got to do with Alcoholics Anonymous? At the time I had no damn idea. I didn' t know nothing at all following from there because I was the authority for my life. I went to me for all answers. I figured out my life ahead of time, anytime. It was always me. I'm the main man. I am. This here is... I'm talking now only about me and alcoholism. I'm taking a look at myself I'm not talking about something in Alcoholics Anonymous that for a long time I missed the mark. I really missed it. I thought it was always a question of being sober. Just stay sober. through it all regardless of what happens don't drink that isn't what it's all about not in my book anyway if I had to live in alcoholics anonymous sober with a mind that I had that I brought here after a period of time to behave with that mind to use that mind in my life that I seen felt was with I knew that there'd be an end to that I knew that I felt it inside I knew it inside but what to do about it I didn't know. During this time, I worked with a lot of alcoholics then I was working with alcoholics too as a funk. I thought at that time it was like I said it was and I believed at that time that it was like that because that's what I was taught that's what I heard and that's what I still hear today at meetings I still here these very same words that I just got through saying just don't drink get a big book put the steps in your life get a sponsor and you'll be alright you see I've had I've had guys and gals both that took their own lives sober and drunk now this here is very very serious it's very it's something that has to be has to be considered. Why an alcoholic? Now, being drunk, I was drunk enough many times to do many things besides killing myself. I could do that too. But not sober. But why should anyone, anyone at all, any alcoholic with alcoholism, why should they have to take their own lives sober? Being drunk, oh, I can maybe think about that, but not sobering. What's wrong what's missing what's happening what's going on when they can't go through another day of a life they're living in and they came here specifically to get away from that life because it was a drunken life it was the life of hell a life of fighting a life or harm and hurt waking up in hospitals and operating tables and everything else I did many many times And then when you're sober, the world has to get so rotten and so harmful that you have to leave it pertinent by yourself, by your own means, specifically. Either blow your brains out, take a gas pipe up the garden nose, up the tailpipe. What's wrong? Is it maybe he's not going to enough meetings? Is it may be that he didn't make as many meetings as I did? Is that maybe he didn't read or have a good sponsor like I had or something like that see all of these thoughts and all of this here ideas now that run through my brain and have been there for many years is all about this right now the true reasons why this book was written specifically why would this book be in existence it's certainly not like the bible this book is not written for humanity this book is written for alcoholics with alcoholism this is what this is all about and yet though I thought it was written to stay sober I thought they were talking about not drinking I thought we're talking I thought I was studying all the time so I didn't have to go in bars I thought i was doing this for that reason I really really believe that I honest to God took that as I'd fight you for the words even if you told me differently and when I'm talking now about the same thing all the times and this is way before it steps now. This hasn't got anything to do with steps per se as a direction or awareness or application or anything like that. I didn't have this what I'm talking about, what I've been saying now. I don't have any of this for the time period that I'm talkin' about which started better than two and a half years. I doesn't have anything. I had the same thing every day, every day every day every day I perform I drove my car I went to work I come home I talk to my wife I talk to anybody the barber the grocery man anybody I talk to them but I'm looking at them with eyes that I've always used before with a mind and ears that I heard things a certain way because you said it and I believe you meant it this way and you didn't and I took it that's what you said that's what you meant and then I get hostile I get angry I get mad, I get pushed out of shape, I have to retaliate. And I don't even know that this affects me in all of my affairs. I don'T EVEN KNOW THAT THIS AFFECTS ME AT WORK. I work like this. I work alongside of somebody and you know what my mind is telling me when I'm working alongside of this person? I'M TRYING TO FIGURE HIM OUT. WHY HE'S LOOKING LIKE HE DOES, WHY HE DRESSES LIKE HE does, WHY He WEARS A BEARD, WHY HE SAYS THINGS THE WAY HE SAYES THEM. I'm looking at them all the time, judging them, criticizing them, condemning them. I got a chip on my shoulder. Man, I'm a long way from being drunk, I'll tell you. I've got a lot of days away from it. But I don't even want that once. I don'T even think thoughts that that's wrong to do. I DON'T even begin to consider that I'M HARMING ME, THAT I'M DOING SOMETHING THE WAY I USED TO DO IT, that I'm the same man sober as I was drunk, that I came here to get rid of that life and I'm still living that life. And I won't be self-honest to self, to look into self for who I really am and what I really represent as far as this character. I wear faces. I wear cases all the time. I have to be one man to somebody special for a special reason and then I have be somebody else for somebody else for another reason. I'm always playing that role. I'm looking out to protect me. I'm Looking Out To See To Make Sure Whatever I'm Doing With Whoever I'm With I'm Going To Look The Best, I'm Gonna Get The Best and I'm going to be the best. You're Going To Favor Me. You're Gonna Show Me Consideration. That's What I Want. This Is The Disease Of Alcoholism Right Now That I Found Out In Alcoholics Anonymous through my own life and then through many, many literally hundreds of other men and women alcoholics that have got the same problems that do the same thing that affects their life the same way that they base everything on how well they are today how much money they got in their pocket how good the contracts were whatever it was being sober then is more than just being sober and so this is now a world now that I have to start seeing I have the ability to look at it I have been aware even though I can't do anything about it even the book talks about even even to be aware of all these things and to have that knowledge you still can't get off the merry-go-round that was me I don't know if some of you think that this is not needed or it's not necessary that could be I know I was that way but I also knew that I could see out of my own eyes other alcoholics especially with alcoholism that had something in their lives that was an attraction it was an honest to God something that I didn't have in my life it was something I knew I needed I knew that there was certain days certain things that weren't in my favor I could accept I could get by that day even though it was what I considered a bad day and yet though there were others around me that lived like that all the time and these were the alcoholics that I was talking about now how they got that or what they did I never once even went up and asked one of them there came a time when I did find out what it was and what was needed and how to do it but it was a piecemeal thing it was an old long time thing it was the thing that I would touch and leave alone it was something that I'd do and then I'd get on safe ground. I would get well. I would pass something, whether it was anything at all. It was loss of a job or acquiring something or maybe needing things and thinking that I'll need to file bankruptcy or something like that, and then i don't. Or maybe the IRS, I thought they were going to hang me out to dry and they didn't. Maybe it was a relationship with somebody that either I needed or I didn't need. Either one of the two. And all these things, all of a sudden I got on the safe ground and then I got past that, I got away from that and then I was alright again. And then I could do my own thing again. Then I could get real strong with the ego and I could start picking up on things again and start being critical. I would start looking at things and find fault right away with whatever I looked at. All I could talk about was the bad side of my life, what was going on in that day. I couldn't talk about things that was really a pleasure or things that I loved to talk about or things I loved To be around or have. all I could talk about was the downside in the bottom of the barrel side all I couldn't think about was how rotten everything is and then everything turned rotten regardless of where I went and I didn't know that the disease of alcoholism is in my brain, wherever my brain goes there goes the disease too it's going to go with it and I did not consider this I did know that I need to have my disease of alcoholism not alcohol, my alcoholism the diseaseof alcoholism now. I didn't know that that must be treated. That must be treated today. It has to be this day. That's like page 85 says we're not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. This now is what I'm talking about has to go into a lot more for me at this. And I know this is true for others too, not all maybe but some that I have to start learning now a great deal about words because these were the things that I knew nothing of as far as what they were there for what they represent what they do, anything so what I mean now is the same thing this is how I found out about this is that the word alcoholism I took for granted I took the word as something I knew a great deal about the word alcoholic I knew I knew a great deal about alcohol because alcohol is something you swallow, something that does something to you. But the word alcoholism isn't related to my life that I need to know why I behave a certain way, why certain things affect me a certainway and other things don't. I don't know that there's something wrong with my brain and it's going to be like this until I die or get a head transplant either one because my brain is the authority and the power and it got damaged. This is what they're referring to in your big book and in the 12x12 that I have to look now to self. To see self for what's really wrong. Because if I don't do this I'm going to still keep looking outside. I'm still going to go every place else and see what I see and hear and do and be like I am and I don' t want to be like that no more. And this is now it's about what's wrong with me. I don''t know if any of you consider this at all but I have to consider this because I have to consider why I look and act and am the character that I am the character only meaning me the way I perform the way I think what I do what I say and so on at one time the word character used to throw me for the lost because when I was drinking running and everything else they always talked to me or told or talked about me as a character and then they described that character and it certainly wasn't anything in favor of me you know So I always took the word character as something that was, whenever you said that word, boy, I know where you're going now. So you don't use that word character around me. So then I had to find out exactly what character meant, what it represents. So I hadto see exactly who I am. I hadt identify me for what I really am. The way I think. The way i act. And I have to relate this now. This is where the hard part came. This is why right now it has been for some years that if, say, I got you for a baby and I was, regardless of who you are, then immediately we're going to have to talk about what I'm talking about. Now, about alcoholism, ego, and self. That's what I call the ABCs. Because, you see, if I don't do this, you might do what I did. You might think the name of the game is just being sober. You might think that all you have to do is don't drink. And you might think that you can live in a world without the alcohol and be different than you are. That's what I thought. So now I'm starting to, I have to start now looking at the disease of alcoholism as how I live, why I live why I do certain things a certain way why it has to be this way or that way and so on down the line because you see there's got to be something else introduced in my life have a different life than I had now I know I know this was so far out for me I couldn't even reach it I couldn't touch it I could even think if I could have it I honestly God didn't think that when I'd hear somebody from the podium talking about things especially if they mentioned the word God or they started on that kick man I'm telling you there ain't no way I'm gonna listen to that one you know because there's something wrong with them you know yeah he's a Jesus freak or something's wrong with them you know and this believe me this is an attitude inside of me that I can't stop I can do anything about it I really can't do a damn thing about that attitude because that's me and that's the authority for my life and I go to me all the time and me says no way and that's what it is no way so I have to learn now as an alcoholic exactly what it is that makes me an alcoholic with alcoholism other than the booze now this is hard to accept this is really hard to except because if I'm regardless of who I am as an alcoholic without all of them in the day I'm in doing whatever I'm doing I find fault there's something wrong because I'm going to find it and if I find it I'm gonna play on it and I'm I'm going to do something about it. One way or another, I'm gonna do something about it." It's just like watching somebody park. I can watch somebody park, you know, and the first thing you know why, man, if he don't park that perfect, I'm not gonna do anything I'm just gonna find some fault there and I'm Gonna Rip Him Apart. I mean this now. But you see, what I'm gunna have to do here is not that I'm looking at somebody just parking. I'm lookin' at a brain in here that considers itself an authority or considers itself so special and so perfect that I can just rip you apart, just judge you all the way. You can't do anything right no matter how many times you try. You still can't feel it right. Not according to my brain anyway. This is what I have to identify. This is the thing I'm going to have to be aware of because you see there's other people around me. Now these other people are around me, could be somebody close or maybe a wife or girlfriend or something like that. But I can't give her a consideration that she needs. Because I'm going to find fault. She's going to overdo something or do one thing wrong too many times. And then my brain is going to act on that. Now, it might not act outwardly, just inwardly, but it's going to act. And I don't know that this is where the disease of alcoholism is and this is why my life is unmanageable in all of my affairs. Because I am going to carry this same attitude and that same line of thinking everywhere I go. that means now that whatever I see whatever's going on there's conflict there there's trouble there but I must identify this I must be aware of it I must have self-honesty to self to see me and admit to me and accept me for what I'm doing this will give me a chance now so that I too can have what the book says I can have what the bottom of page 83 says in the promises, I can at least have a beginning there. If I don't do this, then I'm going to have to produce any life or anything that comes out of there according to my power, according to me. I never looked to me as a power. I don' t know if you ever considered this, but listen, I'll tell you, I lived in Alcoholics Anonymous and I know both sides of the coin now. And I cannot I cannot do what I think I can do. I cannot have any success making people stop doing what they're doing to make them do something so that I approve of it. I don't have the power, but I don' t know the word power because I never considered me as a power, but I am. I'm a power in my mind. I'm the one that really does everything because I use it that way. I've got a brain that's been damaged. I've Got a brain that when I was drinking I learned how to cheat, how to lie, how to steal, how to get favors, how to cut corners, how to put strings on everything I do. I've GOT A MIND THAT'S ALREADY DAMAGED. IT'S LEARNED HOW TO SURVIVE BY DOING THESE DEFECTS OF CHARACTER, THESE THINGS THAT I DO. I FOUND OUT HOW TO GET OFF THE HOT SEAT, HOW TO FAVOR, HOW TO Get Favored, HOW NOT TO GET FIRED, HOW NOT To Have Your Wife Leave You AFTER YOU PUNCH HER IN THE MOUTH. I found out this is me I'm talking about I found out how to cover up and then when I'm sober I got the same brain and I use the same reasoning power that comes from that brain to survive to do to have everything that I believe that I can have and more but yet I never think of this as something wrong with me I never think of this as a disease of the mind I never think of this as something that's going on today after many years of being sober, after many years away from the drink, the bottle. I won't consider this. I don't even think it. I just don't recognize it. It's not there. I'm curious. I don t know that the authority of me, I act real quick. I got a brain that's real fast. It's still fast. It can go ahead of itself. You can go into samaras even, really go into modern. They're not even here yet. I can get ready for them, I can prepare for them. I could talk myself into anything but I don't consider that as a disease of alcoholism. I don' understand who I am and what I am. I don't. I dont understand that there's a power in me and this power that's in me is going to be right has to be recognized because when I started the steps. When I start into a method of living now, a method of living different than the method I know. The known way is my way. Now I'm going to go into strength land. I'm going to be introduced into something, a new method, a method that will treat alcoholism. 12 steps. But yet though, if I don't know nothing about the disease of alcoholism, how can I treat the condition or how can I treat something that I'm not even, I don' t even know it's there. I don''t even know where it comes from. I don't even know why. So if I don t get this kind of information going for me, I didn t at the time. Believe me, I really didn t. I couldn t drive my car. There was no way I could drive my on any street let alone a freeway when I was like this because all you d have to do is just do anything. Just be around me. Cut me off. Stop when you You shouldn't have stopped. And I go nuts. This here, what I'm talking about...