Obsession of the Mind – D. and Chris S. – Big Book Workshop – Austin, TX – Part 2 of 10 – Bob D,Tom I

And why do we need that? We need that because of the manifestations of unmanageability. The stuff that takes us out. So how was I unmanagable? You know, there were so many ways that I shot myself in the foot because of un-manage-ability. I had a total lack of dealage. I just couldn't go out there and I just couldn't do the things that I needed to do. I couldn't deal. I would rather go around the problem and kind of catch up with me later than deal directly with it. I had all this self-centered fear and all this anxiety, you know, so what I was doing was I was operating in a way that was going to cause me all kinds of difficulties, you know? The unmanageability leads to the problems in our life. I believe that. In the book it says the problems are of our own making. I think the light bulbs go off for the alcoholic when they realize that. My problems are my own making, I'm not a victim. My problems aren't coming at me, they're coming from me. That is a big transformation when somebody gets to that and gets to see that. So my life is unmanageable. I can't ask women that I'm attracted to out on dates. I can't ask the boss for a raise. You know, I can go to a party without getting a ton of ballast. Like, I would get drunk out of my mind and then go to the party to drink. Everybody else is going up there and having their first drink at the party. I couldn't do that. I needed to have a little bit of ballasts. Any kind of tough situation, I needed my alcohol. And I, like Bob, have had some experiences with some other substances. But when you look at my addiction cycle, alcoholism is the predominant characteristic of my addiction cycle. Was I using those substances here and there? A lot of times to either prolong my drinking or to manage some of the symptoms of my hangovers was really what I was using a lot of the other drugs for. So I used those alcoholically. All of that wraps around my unmanageability. Now, let's look a little bit at the objection of the mind. This is critical. If it's not an alcoholic and you don't get this, you may not believe that you need Alcoholics Anonymous. If you fool yourself into allowing your ego to believe that it's in charge when you put alcohol back in your body, a lot of times you are going to think you really are your own solution. And you don't need to engage in this. Now what the book says about the obsession of the mind is is that there are going to be times in an alcoholic's life where the sound reasoning that would allow us to stay away from the next drink is not going to exist. It talks in this book about suddenly. Suddenly is like a phenomenon that has happened today. Suddenly, the thought crosses my mind that, you know, I can put some whiskey in those. I want to tell you about one of my suddenlies because I think each of us really have to get to our own truth and have to look back in our experience about where the assumptions of mind and how that has operated in your own personal story. I think we need to do that. I slide myself into a treatment center because my alcohol consumption was really catching my attention I mean, I was just drunk. Here's a picture of a typical day. I was still working because I'm a worker. You know, I had a terrible job, but I'm still working. I would come to in the morning and the clothes I had passed out in the night before, I'd stagger up, I'd go into the bathroom, I'd brush my teeth, I would do my vomiting calisthenics, and I'd stag, stagger out to the car, get in the car and go off to work. Now, how I got is right since 8 o'clock the night beforehand, But if I would have gotten pulled over, I would've blown a breathalyzer and I already got a .40 on the breathalyzers. I was still as drunk as you could be because I drank so much. I'd be at work and I'd say to myself, I swear to God this is the day I'm going to give up. Anybody ever say that? Say that. Today's the day. I'm making the firm decision I don't want to feel this bad anymore. I don' t want to do these stupid things. I don't want to call up Mary Lou McKay from 4th grade in a struck-and-black gown and tell her I love her anymore. You know what I mean? So, uh... So I'm... But the product still... Think about it. Think about this. This isn't that same thought. I am poisoning myself with alcohol. So all I need is 50,000 drinks a day. And I need it. And like Bob said, he was chatting me up to a lie detector. The lie detector is the polygraph guy who says, This guy's telling the truth. He's never going to drink again. This guy is absolutely telling the truth. I get a sandwich down, and I rehydrate it a little bit after lunch, and then I start to think, you know that decision? To completely quit drinking for good and for all that I did this morning? That's a pretty strong position to take. I might have to modify that. You know, because that's really an extreme. Is that right? I might have to I would modify a thing on the way home from work and stop at the liquor store to buy another bottle. And I would stop at a liquor store, I'd buy another quart of whiskey or quart of vodka and I would get home and I'd crack that top and I'll do this. You ever get that feeling of ease and comfort before you even start drinking? Just knowing the liquor is in your hand? And then I would start drinking. I'm telling you, I would start drinking about 4.30 in the afternoon. I would be drunk by 6 o'clock. I'd be blacked out by 7 and I'd be passed out by 8. This is cutting down on my social life. You know? Why aren't you dating? Whoa, Cheryl. I've only got a door window. You know what I mean? It's got to be a quick date. And, you know, And then I'll come to on the floor again the next day. And, you know, this was repeated over and over again. Now listen, listen. I started myself as a recruitment center because I wanted to get off this merry-go-round. I paid $13,000 for the 28K program. When I got out of there they said you promised to go to AA but you definitely need to go to outpatient. So I'm going to outpatients two nights a week. I'm gonna AA two nights per week. What lawyer do people want? I mean, I really thought that that was the treatment for alcoholism because that's what I was being told by counselors and stuff. That's what you need to do. So I was doing that. But that scared kindergartner is like getting more and more scared the further away from booze I get. And there's one day I'm driving. I'm on my way to an AA meeting. And the thought crosses my mind. Now, you have to understand, the obsession of the mind doesn't care what you think. It doesn't care what kind of reasons you have to not drink. It doesn' t care what kinds of consequences you're looking at as you drink. It doesn''t care if it happens, if it hits you, you're on the way to getting alcohol. And that's how the manifestation of the obsession happens. It's been described by some professionals I know as being taken to a process. Let's say you have four or five thoughts in your head right now. There's going to be a primary mover thought, a thought that is going to get you going. What happens is the thought, there can be five thoughts about how stupid drinking is, but the thought to go ahead and drink and get some relief from all this stress of life is going leapfrog to the top of the list of thoughts and you might have 500 reasons why not to drink, But the main thought that has moved itself to the top of your brain stem is saying, go get alcohol. And they're finding scientific proof of this obsession. And they are really starting to understand it with all the brain studies that are going on. But how it happened to me was, I'm on my way to an AA meeting and the thought crossed my mind that I haven't been drunk in almost 90 days. As a matter of fact, I don't even really remember what it's like to be drunk. All day, if I buy a gallon of vodka and start going to this AA meeting and I drink it, it's gonna revitalize my whole commitment to the smart smoking thing. I mean, I am gonna feel so bad probably after this that I'm gonna go, I'm going to be Mr. A.A. and you know, I'm gonna be steering at the outpatient group. And this is good. This is good! I'm struggling, so I bite down on the body. This is Good! This is going to come. I start drinking it. I'm smooth racing through this. It's good. It's Good! I'm halfway through my surgery, and I go, Oh my God! What have I done? I've opened up the K-Store in the basement. They dragged me around like a rag dog for I don't know how long. What have i done? But at this time, I understood the enormity of my error. I put a calendar five years in to prove my survival. Now, the inspection of mine doesn't care how stupid it is. It's going to get alcohol into you if you're not in a spiritual state. It's gonna get alcohol onto you. It doesn't matter if you go to meetings and ask for charity telling everybody you're not drinking. It doesn' t matter. Now, think about this. Think about this, was I insane before I started drinking or was I insane after the third drink? The alcohol actually restored me to sanity. My insanity was prior to putting the drink in my body. I've never taken the first drink drunk. The insanity happens prior to. It talks in this book about the strange, strange mental black spot that pursues the first drink. The subtle form of insanity, they call it. Sound reasoning goes out the window, they say. Now, it's important if you're an alcoholic, it is important to understand this. It's also important to look back over your own experience and see where this has happened to you. Because this will be the motivation, this can be part of the motivation to keep you connected with the recovery process. Because if you think you can just make a decision and not drink, and everything will be fine, then what is your motivation to do the stuff that we're going to be talking about doing here this weekend? You may not have it. And if you don't have that motivation, if you don't that enthusiasm to recover, if you dont get the momentum up with this recovery process and maintain it your chances are less than average. Now the third part of the my own personal experience is basically the allergy of the body. I exactly like Bob Fung's choice that says start teenage and then I'll finish If you came up to me after work and said, Hey, would you like to go out for a couple of drinks? I would say, Can I miss tomorrow? That might be my first. She might be missing tomorrow, you know? So I knew a little bit about that phenomenon of planning. Now, it doesn't happen in non-alcoholics. This is one of the main characteristics of alcoholism. It's the first drink almost always does one thing. And that's to ask for a second. And the second insists on the third, and the third demands the fourth. Studies, modern studies have shown that it's a process of your pancreas and your liver and how they break down and metabolize alcohol. Well, what happens is the chemical, as it's being broken down in the alcohol, creates a physical craving for more of the chemical. So the more alcohol in your body, the more you're going to want more. Now this plays havoc with the DUI courts. You know, we go out for a couple of drinks and we close the bar. This doesn't happen every single time, but it's a main aspect of a chronic alcoholic is that phenomenon of craving. How come was this the first time I drank? Now, I think there are two steps. You can break yourself into that craving by becoming progressively more alcoholic, or you can be born genetically with it. I think I was born genetically. So, if I start drinking, I'm going to have little or no control over the amount I take. And I'm going to be continuing to ensure that I poison myself. I mean, alcohol is a very, very potent chemical. As it breaks down in our body, it forms into different types of compounds. I read somewhere where it turns into acetate. And that's the stuff that you get the tar off your car bumpers with. I mean, this is a very, very serious chemical, and the problem with our craving it is that it's like craving a poison. It's you crave a poison, and once you have that poison, you want more and more and more. It can really cause you to die. The thing that scares most of us is we drink ourselves into unconsciousness. You know? Anybody in here, most of the time you drank, you drank yourself into a blackout and passed out? That is chronic. That's chronic alcoholism. And it is a bear when you get to that point. You really have to pay attention to this recovery process. Now, in my first day being an alcoholic, I've heard a lot of things. Don't drink no matter what. Even if your ass is going to fall off. And this is one of the big things that was going around in the North Jersey area. You know, that's fine. That's fine if you have some kind of power to be able to not do that. I was the type of person who drank no matter what, you know? I found that alcohol, my drinking wasn't really causal. You know they said people, places and things. My alcohol consumption wouldn't really tie into people, place and things things. It was high into the sun going up and down is what it was. You know, I drank when it was a beautiful day. I drank when it was raining. I drink when it snowed. I drank when I drank less. I drank when she stayed. I drunk when I got the job. I drank when lost the job There wasn't any real causality to it. It was more of an illness, more of a disease than anything else. And I see the first step is really tying into a lot of the modern disease concept for alcoholism. I think we beat ourselves up a lot for manifestations, for outbreaks of this particular disease. I think that we think we're morally imperfect. I think that we take so much responsibility, we take so much blame for a lot of this. And really the fact of the matter was I was caught up in something that was much bigger than myself. You know, I wasn't drinking because of problems. I was drinking because I had to be drunk every day or I'd start to go into the VTs. When you're caught up in something that voracious, you have to use the same energy that we sometimes use in beating ourselves up. We are so good at beating ourselves, but that same energy is the energy we can be using to participate in this recovery process. To start to work toward the maintenance and growth of our spiritual experience. So listen, if you're alcoholic, if you're here tonight, definitely welcome. Understand that this is a chronic illness. It's going to take a lifetime of participation in the spiritual maintenance process it is. It's not a 90-day treatment process for alcoholism. It' s not a 28-day It's not a, you know, it's not get your brains out of hock at five years type of a process. It's a lifetime process if you're an alcoholic. And if you are new in here today or just come back there's going to be two things that are true that you are not going to believe. One of them is that you're in way more trouble than you think you are. Alcoholism is much more aggressive than you're giving it credit for. It's going to affect every single aspect of your life. The second thing that you're probably not completely believing is there's a bigger answer in Alcoholics Anonymous than you're giving it credit for. The only answer I gave they any credit for was maybe I could stay sober. I've gotten so much more from AlcoholicsAnonymous than that. So understand you're in more trouble than you think you are, but there's also a much greater solution in here than you're giving your credit for right now, too. If you do, I really hope that the tools underestimates your alcoholism And you won't overestimate yourself. And we all have a tendency to do that, to minimize problems. I'm the kind of guy who would drive on a flat tire hoping it will go away. Alcoholism defames the deep. I was doing a treatment center a while back and this newcomer says, She said, I'm no longer alcoholic. But if I wasn't, I'd smoke every day. Yeah, I know. I know, I don't know. By the time a lot of us get to AA, we've been put into treatment centers. Some of us have been arrested. We've been talked to by people. Maybe your mother and father. Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend, or husband or wife, or maybe kids talk to you about your drinking. Talk to you about you. Maybe your minister. Maybe your P.O. Maybe your doctor. Maybe your psychiatrist or psychologist has talked to you about you He gets real bad and maybe your drug dealers talk to him about you He gets really bad Maybe strangers on the street are startin' to talk to you about you, uh... And no matter what equipping words they use, it's pretty much the same. They're puttin' your face in a safe that's feelin' like, Bob! Bob, you're screwed up! You get to feel a bad day when my depressions are down and I'd probably go, Yeah, I know. I know... Listen, you know why you're screwin' up? No... I don't... Well, you're screwed up for God's sake. You can't get screwed up. If you didn't get so screwed up, you wouldn't be so screwed up. And I'm pretty screwed up because I think, okay, I'm not going to get screwed on. And when I don't get screwed off, I get so screwd up, I've got to go get screwed out. You know, you get screwed up and you're like, yeah, I don' t know why you're screwing around. Can you get me screwed up? I don''t know. It doesn''t make any sense to me because I don ''t understand what''s happening to me. I don.''t understand how Your abstinence is driving me insane. And it's not run down the street with your heroin fire insane, it's a slow, gnawing, incremental journey into insanity. The kind of insanity that you know the thing that you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt you can never, ever, ever touch again, and you swore to yourself, you're never going to touch it again. incrementally alcoholism is going to shift you inch by inch down a road where all of a sudden that thing that you think is impossible, you're never going to do again, it's going to seem like a good idea. It will use your own mind against you. Beginning in chapter three and more about alcoholism, it makes a blanket statement that seems to get through across the board, and it's most of us that they're unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. For a living, of course! I found to be a drug addict. There's a little panache in drug addiction. I'm not a rock star if you're a drug-addict. I don't know anybody I've ever looked up to that was a drunk. I mean, who wonders when we got, you know, we got some people with little canoes that are drunken and drunk. That's pathetic. It's like I had an uncle who was an alcoholic. I knew how everybody in my family felt about him, and I hated it. I would tell him, that ain't going to be right here. What do you call a guy? What do you call the person who's a little boy? What does he call a person who is born with a disease of alcoholism? All picture. The parents in a family, they're alcoholics, And they hate their parents and are helping never to be like their parents. What do you call a person like that? A drug addict, that's exactly right. If you've got an injury, you've gotta scratch it one way or another. You've gotta take this required medicine. And the problem is, is the medicine is our demise. So, most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his spouse. I am bodily different, and I always will be, because of something on a cellular level inside of me, of a physical reaction to alcohol. And that's true no matter how long you're sober, no matter what mental or emotional stability you have, no matter however well you've done. I do a detox twice a week in Las Vegas. It's a low-bottom detox. And we see the people in there that were from New Jersey or North Carolina or Texas or Florida or Alaska that are sober 30, 40 years and drinking again. Los Angeles calls you. It's a siren's call. And they end up on the streets and they endup going to T-Cops. Where did that come from? Years ago, 45 years. Sober and he drank again. We tried to make this guy, we're just trying to make a project out of him because Bill Wilson had been a sponsor and he had a lot of great stories about alcoholism in the midst of a life where he was addicted in a church and he was had everything going his way he made 45 years of abstinence and he made one bad decision because somewhere along the line he started backing away from his solution and the insanity started creeping back in And he said, from what he said was, listen, one day you're never ever going to hurt anyone else in your life. And the next day it's like a key turns in your head and all of a sudden it's a good idea. Why? Because he stopped doing the things that kept him spiritually fit. And he tried again and he was dead within six months. I will always, no matter how long I'm sober, no mater how good my life is, no matter what good a shape I'm in, no matter how spiritual I am, I will always have an allergic reaction to alcohol and I can't ever, ever, ever use alcohol in any form again. And I'm mentally different. Now, one of the great promises in the book, in step four, says that when those spiritual maladies overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. But that is a chronic condition that's continuing on daily maintenance. It's because every day is a day where I have to maintain my spiritual condition. So, if I maintain my spiritual condition, I'm not very...I'm not nuts. I'm no wacko. I live all over the world. I mix with people. Nobody thinks I'm weird. I am very productive. I ran a big company for a long year. Very successful. I see their inner face with people in the community. Got along very well with them. Nobody thought I was nuts. I don't feel nuts. I don't interact in a crazy wacko way like I did my first couple years of survival and everything was pretty well. Confusedly, on maintenance for my spiritual condition. But on a bad spiritual hair day, ooooh, I just keep my mouth shut and call my sponsor and go to meetings. Because on a BAD spiritual hair-day, I'm a little different. When Dad's spiritual heard that, he kind of eclipsed the logic that average people would just never consider. My daughter is not an alcoholic, and this is so beautiful. She recently, she broke up, she's a 23-year-old. She broke up a long time, couple year relationship. She's kind of sad. I see her, we get together once a night, we spend together, have dinner again once a week. Right after this happened, she's with me. She's very sad. I'm trying to control her. Okay, Cindy, all right. You know you're going to have to kiss a lot of paws before you find your prince. I'm throwing a little things at her right now. I need the next week. And she's copying. She said, okay. She just changed the technical. She says, no, it's great there. We're going out next week and... She's not moving all day. I said, gee, you couldn't possibly be done with that yet. I mean, I knew it. My mother said that. But she's an alcoholic. She's willing to spend the energy making herself sick. See, I'm alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic in every bit of me. I don't drink and experience like that, like a drank alcohol. I'm not a moderate healer. I'm not a moderate depressor. I am not a moderate worrier. I am an alcoholic and everything in me. I find a guy, go to work, this happened to me, boss left me a note 9 o'clock in the morning wants to see you in his office at 3 o' clock in the afternoon. Normal working is just go back to business, work all day and then go to class at 3 like you're supposed to, I start thinking. I start thinkin' about the words he comes out five minutes late. I started thinking about the customer a couple weeks ago that didn't really, was in a bad mood. Maybe he said something about me. I start looking at the other employees and start noticing things about them. Like maybe they're talking crap behind my back. I started realizing, you know, I'm working harder here than any other idiot in the world that appreciates me. And they're going to call me an artist for God's sakes? But I'm like, I'll just go in there and tell that guy it's a dead job and she says nothing. And I walk in, thank God he didn't say anything. Turned out I wanted to get a raise, so I promoted him. He was in the exact same spot when he told his boss off and found out later from another employee that he'd been up for a promotion and they wanted to talk to him about it. I am mentally different. I got a couple years ago, I was working with him, and he said to me, he always talks to him about how you're once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. You always get chattel with alcoholism, and you have a tendency to get a little weird and everything. He says, that's not true. I said, well it's true in my experience. He says oh, it says in the book that after you don't drink for a while, you're sober for a while, and then you become normal. I said you know, I read that book. I don't think I've seen it anywhere. And he says, no, no. It's in there. It's on page 22. I said let's see the book. We got a book, and he turns to page 22, and I says where is this? the bottom of the page, whatever. So I'm reading this and here's what it says. It says, We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from his mate if he may do so much for years, he reacts much like other men. It doesn't say we're normal. It said we react much like? It says that guy is much like a woman, but don't try! If you saw the crime scene, this isn't real, this is fake! What that means is continuing on the faith leads to my spiritual connection. I love during the world and fool them. They don't know I'm weird, I don't know I am weird, but I will always live in the shadow of alcoholism. I am prone to illness. The diabetic can be, maintains his diet, his exercise, and his blood sugar level throughout the world, and nobody will ever suspect he's diabetic, but he You will always live in the shadow of diabetes, as I will always live in a shadow of alcoholism. But I live a spectacular life as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. But not as a results of just not drinking. If you're a chronic alcoholic it might help you. And all you do is quit drinking and try to integrate yourself socially into a social sober fellowship You're going to get sicker in time. You're going to be so sick in time that someone's going to want to medicate you or you're goingto want to drink. If all you do is just quit drinking and try to clean up your act. I have chronic alcoholism. Most people think that I'm willing to live my life. I am bonding mentally different from other people, so therefore It is not surprising that my drinking career and my fainting career have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove I drink like other people. Why would I do that? Because, my God, I want that. I want the effect. The thing about alcohol is this illusion that I want to drink like others. I don't really want to drink like other people. I want to be drunk like I drink, and have the consequences of non-alcoholics. That's what I really want. The idea that someday, some day, some way, somehow... Somehow I'm going to be able one day to do two things that I want to do so desperately. Control and enjoy my drinking. I don't know about you, but if I'm controlling my drinking, I'm not enjoying it. If I'm enjoying my drinking I can control it as well, I just try. But what is that about? But this illusion that I have suffered from, it's this idea that under the right set of circumstances, that I can jumpstart the party. That under the wrong set of circumstance, I could get the ease and comfort. That under right set circumstances, I can do that and keep the damage down to something reasonable. No, I never suspect. I'm never so deluded that I don't think it's going to be a price. I'm not deluding it. I think I should manage the price. In 1978, or actually late 77, when I was back in the last trunk, I discovered an apple house many months and I was just so lonely and so bored, and so... I just kind of wanted to have some fun, because I saw I'm a victim of this delusion that there is fun left in it, and I can get away with it. And then a week came past, and then I got out of there to go get laid off, have some fun, and hope I never forget this. I was running into this amazing bar that this friend of mine had told me about, and ordered some double shots and beers, because Because I've got to get there. And I'm throwing these drinks down, waiting for it to kick in. Because I'm watching guys in this bar dancing with girls. They're shooting pool and laughing. There's a great band. And man, I just want to get connected. I'm so lonely here. And the problem is it's not jump-starting. All that's jump-starting is the phenomenon of craving. That gnawing, like, tiger inside me. Just one more. One more. And I'm just obsessed with having another one, hoping it's going to change it and doesn't change it. And I remember, I hope I never forget sitting there as I'm starting to get a little rummy looking at the people in the bar that are having fun and almost breaking into tears feeling sorry for myself. And I looked at the fun we were having and sat there and thought to myself, my God, what's wrong with me? Because I could remember. I knew that there was a time when I was all about that. There was a moment of magic, and I can't get it back. It was like a window opened up in my own delusion. And I could see a truth that was so painful, it would eventually drive me to suicide. And the truth is, I can drink this stuff, I can smoke stuff, I can do stuff until it kills me. But this pathetic, lonely, self-pitying drinking is as good as it's ever going to get for you again, Bob. And I finally knew once and for all that the party was over. And you know, I know that because I've tried now for several years to roll it back to the good old days and failed every single time, and the despair of that, knowing that there is no chemical solution for me, was overwhelming. I finally became an alcoholic of the hopeless variety because I lost all hope in the bag and the bottle. I lost All Hope of Fixing Myself. And I didn't end up back at the halfway house when the weekend pass was over. I ended up in a county jail, facing two years in a state penitentiary. See, I couldn't control it as much as I thought. And I couldn' enjoy it. And the delusion was finally smashed. It says, um, the persistence of this delusion is astonishing. When he pursued it in the case of insanity or death. I was I lived in a halfway house in 1978 when I messed over this last time, and the guy that ran the place was a live guy. But I remember him, some people would go out and drink again, and people would say, why did they drink again? And he'd say the same thing. He'd say, because they thought they could. And I would drink again because I thought I could. I wanted to believe I could so desperately. I wanted it to be able to. And it's an illusion. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. Chuck Faber used to say that recovery from alcoholism was an inside job. This is not a cognizant, intellectual recovery. It's an experiential deep within you. There's a place inside of you where you can connect to God's system. There's a bug in VR that's battering your head, and there's a maze in the tennis game up here. There's places inside of you where you're capable of making connections where you know things. They're experiential connections. That's why I went to 11 treatment centers. I got to the point where I could listen to Father Martin movies. I mean, you know, I've seen Chod Talks, all the Chod Knocks, so many times. I just, I had to do the Rocky Horror Picture Show with Father Martin. I mean... I became a counselor in the early 70s. And I was a retriever center. I was the bright guy. And then I became an advisor. And then you got a job at Peterson. And then he was school where I became his counselor. I tell you, I was an amazing substance abuse counselor right up to the day I lost a job for being drunk on a job. I got it. I got a lot of what I'm here. But it's in inside job. It's in here. We learned we had to fully concede to my innermost self. So I did a lot, a lot things. I just go and meet with a group set of a bunch of people that are admitting they're alcoholics or talking about a verbal first step. Well, I can say it grossly. That doesn't mean that I believe it within me. You know what you could tell? Watch my feet when I left them. Watch my actions. I could give you a tremendous dissertation on how I'm an alcoholic and how I was powerless and couldn't manage my own life. And the moment I left the treatment center, I acted like someone who now had found power over this problem in you and learned their lesson as you now managed your own life In 1978, after a failed suicide attempt and seven years of relapse, If you will watch me, my first two years of surviving, I'd seen a guy who was scared to death, that was going to 15 meetings a week, was calling his sponsor, was going on doing crazy things like turning myself in to the police, making amends I didn't think would work, going on 12-step calls, stuff that I would have never, ever done unless I was hopeless, unless I wasn't desperate. See, and finally, when it gets to your innermost self, it starts coming out in your actions. Don't believe what you think or what you feel. Believe what you do. You can tell if you have a good sponsor in alcoholism because I have a great sponsor. My sponsor cares very little about how I feel. Very little. As a matter of fact, if he starts getting into a team-up, he turns on his AHA machine. But he is very, very interested in what I do. He wants to know, what am I doing in my own program recovery? What actions am I taking? What kind of a member of AA am I? And it's odd because look, if you're self-centered, that means you live up in your head head and you live consumed in the middle of your feelings and thoughts, self-centered, self-absorbed, self open, self obsessed guys like me have a tendency to judge how we're doing on how we feel. Well that's a bad deal because there are times, and there are times in my survival, I'm not proud of this, but between about 11 years and 15, 16 years where I was making big, big money sometimes close to seven figures a year. I had antsy cars and motorcycles. I was dating a couple different gals. I mean, I was rocking and rolling. He asked me, how you doing, Bob? I said, oh, doing great. When you're building a house of cards based on self, it feels like you're doing really good as long as you're getting your way. But when that house of cards starts to implode, which happened later, it's a different deal. Now, if you'd asked my sponsor in that same time period how I was doing, he would have answered you based on what I was doing. He would have said, oh, Bob, well, he lives through this. He's probably going to help some people. about seven years ago six or seven years ago I went through a very difficult divorce he'd ask me at times how he was doing and caught me on the right date I might have told you I'm just hanging in here I'm trying to do the right thing the truth is I don't feel very good and I'm scared and there's a lot of stuff going on here there's not a lot of stake and I don' really like any of this and I don't feel like I'm doing very well. If you'd asked my sponsor, he would have told you, Bob's doing good. Bob's calling me a couple times a week. He's returning phone calls. He's sponsoring guys. He's listening to the tips. He's going down to detox twice a week He's making his commitments. He's trying to have a relationship with God. Bob's dealing good because he would've judged how I was doing on how I'm feeling, not on how life feels. and that is the great guilt of alcoholics is that we are brought into reality by what we do one of the great fun is the big facades I've focused on behind all my life is that I judge myself based on the things I tell myself the stories I tell my self I don't see me the way you see me the rest of the world has a completely different view of me than I do. Because I'm asleep in my own life listening to the daydream about my life. That's why Alcoholics Anonymous will have a book called Don't See The Albums For Jane when they have it called Lois Remembers. They're a little more open on the money than we are. And you'll think that's true. Sit down with a member of your family with an open mind and start talking about the How cold do you live in as a kid with anything that's somewhere else, isn't it? That's not what happened. I don't do that with my sister. She told me so. I can't allow that because I had to think to myself, well, she's pretty normal. If someone's perception of our childhood was skewed, I wonder what the kid's scarf would be her. Right? I remember the story. The delusion that we are like other people or practically maybe have to be smashed. What is it about us that we want to get over this thing? I've watched this delusion take a lot of people out, some of them over 20, 25 years. You watch it, you'll see it in your home group. You may, if you could step back from yourself, You didn't see it in yourself, and if you see it in yourself you should be horrified. That maybe your first couple years of sobriety you had a level of involvement in your own recovery as if it was the most important thing to you. As if it wasn't a matter of life and death. And then maybe at three or four years sober you started to get seduced by the very comfort that you found here. You got seduced by the various fruits of your own recovery and do a full sense of okayness. Because we're feeling-oriented people, it's so easy when you feel good and you feel like there's not a problem to start acting like it. And so what happens? Maybe in five years of sobriety, you're doing half as much AA as you did in one year. Maybe by the time you're seven or eight years sober, you know, You're too busy now with your own life to help others and have commitments in A&A. Maybe you don't really talk to your sponsor, you just call them on occasion to touch base and to kind of tell them what you've been going through and how you went through it in case he ever needs that information. Maybe when somebody calls one day and says, we need you to do this or we need that, but we need to go to both their calls. say something like, oh, I've done a lot of that. Let one of the newer people do it. But you haven't done a whole lot of it this year or the year before. And you don't even see it because you keep judging how you're doing by how you feel. And, you don' t even see that incrementally you're starting to compromise your own involvement in your sobriety and You don't know it. You never see it. And so all of a sudden, if you don't build up a structure, a spiritual structure, and tear it down overnight, it's incremental. And then one day the key turns and you pick up a drink and you don' t understand how you did that. Or maybe you end up in an accident or maybe something happens to you and they put you on some pain medicine. But because you're spiritually ill and don't want to do it, you don''t know it, the pain medicine goes right to the spiritual malady instead of going to the pain. And now you've let the grill out of the cage. You can't get it back in again. I've seen this so many times, it's just frightening. There you go. There you go. I was in detox years ago. This guy was sharing something I thought was funny. He didn't seem the humor in it at all. He says, I don't know why I ended up running away from him. I'm just over 17 years. I have a wife and three kids that adored me. I had a big house. It was over 4,000 square feet. I had two cars and two cars. Both were paid for. I had to respect the community. Everything couldn't been better in my life. I don't know why I drink." As Edom, he thinks all of that crap was a treatment for alcoholism. If you were to go to a hospital and talk to a guy who came out of a dog-fed coma, and he said, I don' t know why he's in a dog fed coma. I have a new car. What do you want me to tell you? What's wrong with you? But in Alkali, that crowd went serious. Right? We tell our kids, the problem is you have an outfit that's low for $20,000. You tie yourself a bunch of P.S. You buy it. Your friends wouldn't buy it and then crap grows best in the dark. That's why if you start to compromise your own sobriety you become less transparent with people. Because you don't want to let them in. You have to build a structure around the sickness that you're incurring in your life to protect it. And we do. We're covering a lot of material here tonight on step one. And if you look at the big book and you look at the amount of material that's in the big book or step one, I think there's a reason for that. I think if we don't get this part, there's a really good chance we're not going to get the rest. Again, we need to understand the problem. The first step is the problem, the solution to the problem is really the spiritual awakening and the rest of the material is the stuff in between to help you get to the spiritual awakening. Alcoholics Anonymous has changed a lot over the years. It's become really an almost all-inclusive fellowship. Somewhere around the 1950s to 60s, things changed. The citizens came out and were ratified. Alcoholism became a disease or was declared a disease by the American Medical Society. There's a number of things that have happened both inside and outside Alcoholics Anonymous that has teased kind of the operational systems within the fellowship. I think that the book Alcoholics Anonymous is a great place to bring us back to the things that were. You know, we've learned so much about alcoholism. We've learned such a lot. There's so much wisdom teaching in the fellowship that it's unbelievable. But so much of it is wonderful, but it's really irrelevant to our specific problem. It takes our eye off of the ball. One of the great things that Phil Olson had was the good is sometimes the enemy of the best. And I understand that today, you know, experientially. I really do. I know that there are some really good things that you can be involved with in AI. silver softball. You know, I mean, there's just a number of things that you can get yourself involved with, and they're good. But we have to remember that we also need to be part of the process that is the best, the recovery process. We can't do all this other stuff instead of the recovery process. We can do all that other stuff as well as. Now, in the first paragraph of We Agnostics, it kind of sums up a few things. One of them is it kind of sums us to one. But I like what it says in here. In the preceding chapter, you've learned something about alcoholism. Now this next sentence I find very, very important. It says we hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. One of the things that happens in AA today, and I know because I was very, very guilty of this in, say, my first five years, is I'm not about the process of qualifying people anymore. I remember hearing in the meetings that, well, you don't get to alcohol, it's not a Or, you know, if you're in this room, you're in the right place. You know, only alcoholists end up in alcohol cinemas. I've heard a lot of different things like this and I beat my head against the wall sponsoring people that really weren't what you would call good AA members or people that really belonged to AA. They were in Alcoholics Anonymous to get out of a jackpot. They were in Alcoholics Anonymous because of well-meaning but misunderstanding professionals. They weren't really what you would call alcoholics, and I had a couple of psychopaths. I had some real dudes, and trying to sponsor them, trying to work with them on their problems nearly drove me out of my mind. I had basically a sponsorship breakdown in my ninth year. Anybody that would come up to me and say, Chris did you sponsor me? Yes. Sometimes it's a really big mistake. I think what they're saying in this sense, we hope we've made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic, I think that that's something that I need to take responsibility for sometimes as a sponsor. And what I'll do today is I will go through someone's first step with them. I'll cover all the material. I'll help them with the readings. And we'll look back together over their own experience to see whether they have the allergy of the body, whether the obsession in the mind has been operative, and what their particular unmanageability looks like. Now, most of the time today, people who are going to qualify as alcoholics ask me to sponsor them. But in my earlier days in AA, that was really not the case. And I was wasting a lot of my time, and I was wasted a lot on their time by actually working with them. I think it's important to get to the essence of our truth in the first step. And I'm also unattached to an outcome. I mean, for all alcoholics and optimists, do you reverse brag? You know what I'm saying? Oh, you have two teeth, what if I had four? Or do you drink three bottles of whiskey, I drink ten? I think it's better news if we're going through this book and we're helping to qualify somebody that we find out that maybe they're not an alcoholic. Maybe they're a problem drinker, and if they stop drinking, their problem will go away. That may be better for them than to try to convince them that they're an alcoholic when maybe they might not be, and try to tie them into a fellowship for the rest of their life that they may not necessarily need. So, again, it's lost in this chapter. It sums it up in like one sentence, really. Here it says, if when you honestly watch it, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you cannot quite, you know, a little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. So what are two things we need to look at? You know, what I was intrigued to think about is all these questions, All these questions that they would ask me, that were supposed to show that I was alcoholic. And really those questions pertained to the external problems I had when I was drinking. But a cigar and heavy drinker couldn't have those same problems. You know? Do you ever run yourself over with your car? You know, do you ever come to in different towns with one too? I mean, you know, these are things that any drinker could have happen to them. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're an alcoholic. So a lot of the outpatients that I went with, a lot of the streamers, there was no real upside in them separating the alcoholics from the problem drinkers. Everybody's a paying client. You know what I mean? But so a lot of the things that I was taught early on was about the problems that alcohol can cause. Not necessarily the cause and condition of alcoholism. The cause and condition is very simple, really. It's the obsession of mind, the algae in the body, and the unmanageability and how that unmanagability manifests. Bill is very, very good at coming up with stories in this book to show those things. In the chapter More About Alcoholism, there's Jim, there's Fred, there' s the Man of Thirty, there is the Jay Walker. All of these stories are specifically designed so that the alcoholic can identify themselves themselves as that particular type. Now, when you come to the conclusion of the first step, when you've come to that deep internal experiential truth of the First Step, you've got to understand it's nothing to be happy about. What it is, is it touches where it stands and there's is common, is what the understanding of the first step is. It's basically if you understand that the first thing is basically this your mind will convince you to put alcohol back in your body and you won't even be there for that decision. You will be in a state of insanity. So you won' t really be playing a real part in putting that alcohol back in your body. No matter what people want to tell you, you're not even going to be there. And once If that alcohol is back in your body, your body's going to experience you play yourself with it because you're going to be drinking it until you pass out and you're gonna get caught on the roller coaster of alcoholism for however long you're gunna be on it until the next separation experience. And not only that but your life is going to feel absolutely in the toilet. Every bit of quality in your life will be in the toilets because of the unmanageability bondage of self, and the inability to have anything to do with your own emotional condition. You know, so this is really, really bad news, the first step. You know? It's not something to be happy about. Oh, I figured out today I was an alcoholic. Boy, that was a relief. Well, you don't really understand alcoholism then, if you're going to think about that. Yes, there is a solution, and the solution can be absolutely wonderful. There are many people in this room tonight that will say that participating in a solution or an achievement to alcoholism in the spiritual manners that's laid out in this book has become the most important part of their life and offers them the highest quality of life that they've ever had. Yes, it will be people like that, But you have to start from the understanding of surrender. Now, for people who misunderstand the first step, they're usually the people who just try the fellowship. I'm just going to do the fellowship, I don't want to get involved in any of those steps, service, I'm just going go to meetings. Now, if you're in real trouble, that's not a good idea. It would be like the person who, let's say they had a heart condition and they really needed treatment for. And they went to the hospital every single day and sat in the waiting room and talked to other people in that waiting room about their heart problems. Oh, yeah, I got a heart problem. My aorta is really pumping bad now. You know, it's really bug ticker, and you know, I'm grateful that I have heart problems. And they never go in to get the operation. They're in the waiting room. Year after year after year. Now would those people be crazy? Absolutely. But that happens in alcoholics now and it's every single day. Most of us have done that sort of thing. Went into the college, sat in the rooms and expected recovery to come through osmosis, you know, without any participation in the process. With a true connection to the first step, you're not going to be able to lie to yourself about what comes next. If you are truly powerless, if you are hopeless, if you understand that you have to have a surrender at absolute depth, then that places you in a position to be open-minded and willing to move forward. And if you care anything about your life, you will develop a discipline around this. Hopefully the discipline will result in an enthusiastic participation in this process. Two things kill us. One is inconsistency And the other is lack of enthusiasm for the recovery process. That killed us. You know, sometimes the spiritual practices are discipline. We really do care more about your seat than what you take. We really did care if we're good sponsors. We care about your participation. We care that your momentum, you keep your momentum up with all of this. And hopefully, hopefully we entertain the support to keep you enthusiastic about this process. Now I've worked with people who just cannot stand AA. They've done the steps, they do the service work, they sponsor, they can do everything, but they just can't stand AA, even doing everything that I've asked them to do. Now, those percentages are incredibly rare, but that's still a better deal than putting alcohol in your body. For most of us, this develops, this Alcoholics and Honest participation, develops into a perspective, a shift in perception. It develops into how we live our life and how we see the world and our interactions in it. And the more we practice these spiritual principles, the more spiritual things happen to and for us. And usually, the better we get at life. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be making more money or that you'll be in better health. Those things are outside the scope sometimes of this spiritual process. But I will tell you this, your attitude and your outlook on life will really change. your ability to enjoy life, even in some of the serious challenges that can come our way, can happen. It's happened for me. I mean, I've had my ups and downs over the past 20 or so years. I've been up and down, but since I've become consistent in practicing the principles that help me participate in the maintenance of my spiritual condition, I've even gotten through those with a very minimal amount of suffering. You know, the type of suffering that we used to have when we were drinking. Things could be good and we would figure out a way to suffer back in the drinking days. Now, get with an experienced sponsor. Experienced sponsors aren't as plentiful as one would hope these days. someone who really understands the steps, and if you're unsure at all about your alcoholism or your truth, get with somebody that can really help you identify, really help you go through the description of the alcoholic, the questions that it asks, so that you can get as close to your truth as you possibly can. Because that can mean a difference between life and death. Because, you know, most people most people that come into AA today, after a short period of time realize that they've overreacted. You know what I mean? And they move on with their life. And some of them drink and die, and some of the more alcoholic, but, I mean, we don't want to make that mistake. Life is too precious. And listen, And our alcoholism affects everybody around us. So if you have any compassion or any love for the people that are in your close circle, understand that your recovery is going to be beneficial to them also. So pay attention to the first step stuff. It's going to give you the fuel that will motor you through the rest of the steps. Bob? Oh, thanks, Chris. I'm Bob, an alcoholic. Last step. Hello? The last several years of my drinking, it had turned on me pretty badly. And I couldn't turn it back. I was, to tell you a little story, I was staying on a guy's couch. I was not a good house guest. Because I would drink to pass out. And then when I passed out, sometimes I'd burn a hole in your furniture with a cigarette. I've done that with cigarettes. Sometimes I'd pass out from drinking, you know, five or six quarts of beer and some wine, and I'd wet your couch. If you went to work, and you had drugs or alcohol or money in the house, and the madness would get on me, I'd find it. And I'd take it. The heart felt intention of replacing it someday. But when it was on me, I couldn't stop. And I come to on this guy's couch and he's not fed up with me like the last couple people that have let me stay on their couch. I come too one morning and now my drinking is accelerated to the point where I get tremors in the morning. Shakes. And they're so embarrassing. I hate when people would see me take that first drink and my hands would shake. I'd come to and I'd sit on the edge of this couch and I grabbed myself because I was shaking so much that I'd rock back and forth trying to get up enough courage to go out there and get another bottle of wine. You know, I'm not the guy with the bag anymore. I'm that bad guy. I'm the guy who's pretty much drinking the cheapest vodka you can get or Richard Wild Irish Rose or sometimes Thunderbird. Thunderbird with pitch and no, you don't have to. I'm rummaging around for money, and I found a couple of rolled up dollar bills in the bottom of these dirty jeans and some change. And I had enough money for a half gallon of wine. So I'm on my way out to the liquor store, the state store, and in Pennsylvania they open at 10am. And I'm telling you, you can get there at 9.30 and pace back and forth in front of those grass windows and look really pathetic, and they will not open any earlier than 10 o'clock. I know. I am trying, and I am giving them my best pathetic look. And they don't open any early. And if I was right, come on, open that door, you go in there, I'll get you a jug of wine. Now I'm out in the street, and now I'm looking for an alley to duck down and kick well, to get to kick well. before I get down and out a woman cuts into me who knows my mother and father now I love my mother and father I came from a good family I didn't come I wasn't abused as a kid I had parents that loved me but I broke in their hearts so many times over and over again they eventually wouldn't have anything to do with me for their own sanity and this woman cuts into me she said how's your dad well I don't know I haven't talked to my parents in a while and she says I hear he's in the hospital and he's dying. It's like, oh my God. I felt like somebody gushed on me. And I got away from that woman as quickly as I could and I had enough change left over. I went to a phone booth and I called my parents' house and my mother answered the phone and when she heard my voice she gave me that we want kind of hostile stuff and that's kind of what you get when you break somebody's heart that loves you enough. And I said to her, Mom I heard Dad's in a hospital And she didn't say anything for a moment. Then when she started to talk, you could hear the tears in her voice. And she said, yeah, we don't know if he's going to make it. Damn. Man. See, I love my father. And I got a lot of unfinished business with my dad. And the idea of him dying and I've got to talk to him. When I said to his mom, I said, Mom, I've gotta sleep. She said, you can't see. She said, I know how you are. It will hurt him to see you like that. And I'm a mess. You don't have to tell me. You don' t have to rub my face in it. I know I'm the best. You know, I don't eat anymore because I'm not going to eat. I just need enough of my drinking money. You know what I'm saying? I drink so much every day. You give me a choice of bottled wine or McDonald's, McDonald's loses. I mean, it just always does. So I've got stores that don't heal right because I got a vitamin deficiency, and I got tremors, and I've got hair down to here that's... I don't bathe, and then I've had a long beard. I can't see myself as easy top tryout. It's just that I don' t know how to talk about it. I'm a mess, and we know it. I know I'm the best, but I've gotta see my dad. You know, I love my dad, so I've tell him how sorry I am for all the things I've done. I said to my mom, I said, Please, please, I'm begging you, please. Let me go see him. I said, I promise you, I swear to you, I will not be drinking. I won't take any drugs. I will be sober. I'll get cleaned up. I plead, Mom. She says to me, she said, if I tell you, you can't screw around with this because even if you're a little bit high, he can tell. And my dad could tell. My dad could talk over the telephone. I was fine when I'm not even very high at all. I mean, he had that way to do that. I don't know, some kind of weird radar or something. And I told her, I said, I promised you, Mom. Well, I've already started drinking. And I've, um, I'm already started drinking this half-gallon wine. So I told her, I said tomorrow morning I'm going to go see Dad. And I went and I, I'm a blackout drinker and I ended up blacking out that night and I don't know what happened. I don' t know where I was. I said listen guys, I vaguely remember and I come to on that sofa the next morning with those tremors and I gotta go see my dad. But the idea of going to that hospital, I don't feel very good. I feel this kind of dirty inside that a shower don't help, you know? I just, I only like to be around people. I used to go out in the streets sometimes when I was sober. I'd be so insecure and so uptight that if people would just look at me and make me crazy. I'm never springy to people sometimes. It hurt me to have you look at Me. And I'm pathetic and I'm sitting there and I was faking it and trying to put my act together and I am thinking to myself, man I can't go over there, those people in that hospital are going to be looking at me. I've got to walk down those halls and I've gotta ask people for directions and all that stuff. I can do this. I gotta see my dad and I have this battle inside staring me up. And I started thinking to my self, well Bob what's the need? For God's sake you just let your dad see the tremors. you need a half of a half a pint of vodka. You can't smell vodka. A half of the half a pint of vodka, you eat some Hall's cough drops, the guy you're staying with is vicing in an Hermes cologne and he's messing out he's flapping around a little bit of vicing half of it's a half a pipe, Hall's cough drops, go see him. Take the shakes away go see your dad. Sound like a good plan. Well I start rummaging around for money and I ended up with over four dollars. Now I don't know, I think sometimes blackouts to a blessing, because sometimes I come through with more money than I started with. And I don't want to say, I'm not sure I want to know where that came from. And I've got enough money now for a fit that you can get at the state store. You can get a fit for that cheap pocket for $3.95. That's good enough for a kit. Now, I don' t want a kit, but I've gotta have a hat and a bag of clothes. But I know I'm going to need the rest of that kit later after I come back from that I'll still go get that fifth of vodka. And then I'm just going to drink that half-a-pint while I'm an idiot. Every drink of alcohol I've ever taken in my whole life makes me think, well, one more's good. And the next thing I know, I don't know I've got a phenomenon of craving. I don' t know I' ve got an allergy to alcohol. I don''t know that it punks me out and uses my own mind against me and makes every next drink justifiable and reasonable. the next thing I know I'm better than halfway through that fifth of vodka and now I'm too rummy to go to that hospital and pull it off and I'm sitting there and I am crying feeling sorry for myself because my dad is going to die and I will not be able to see and I try to get some hope out of that and I said to myself ok for God's sake about tomorrow man tomorrow you are going to come to and you are not going to drink nothing and you're going to go see your father and I meant it and everything in between. I'm sad to tell you, tomorrow came and it was the same deal and the next day was the scene deal and I never did go see my father. And if you think I didn't love my father, you're out of your damn mind. But that's what alcoholism does to guys like me. With hating wonder, it's so hard for some of us to save our own lives because we secretly ate ourselves. There was a guy, in 1978 I went to a bridge