Omnipotence and the Failure Mechanism – Powerlessness Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Bob B.

And you keep trying to find ground, keep trying to put your feet down, and you're not quite sure where it is. And so I'm back having many, many experiences that are similar to what I had early on in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm dealing with fundamental issues in my life. I'm doing with ego, I'm dealing with my pride, I am dealing with my identity, I m dealing with success, I m doing with fear, I m dealing with anger, I m dealing with frustration. So I think I m right back. I mean, I sit in meetings today and I feel sometimes more new than I've ever felt in my life. When I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was 23 years old and I had started drinking when I was 14 years old and I was one of those people that literally from the first drink of alcohol was an alcoholic. It's kind of a classic case of whatever that type of alcoholic is. It was just magic. I found an answer and I went after alcohol and alcohol worked very well for me. It took care of the differences it made me feel part of It gave me a feeling of omnipotence and well-being and made me unaware of the differences that I had from other people. We hear everybody describe their first or early relationships with alcohol and drugs. I mean, they're really profound, and they're profound because they work. You know, they kind of answer important questions for us and work as techniques to deal with issues that everybody has, and we choose those to answer them. So for a long time I relied on alcohol to do things for me. I got a sense of euphoria from it. I loved the people. I loved their action. I liked everything about it. And then alcohol started to get in my way and started to experience a cost for my behavior. In the early part when I started to experienced costs costs like tickets and accidents and trouble at school and trouble at home, behavioral issues and reputation issues and money issues and some of those sorts of things. Hell, it never even occurred to me that the cost of my behavior wasn't worth it. It seemed like, sure, in order to have this wonderful thing in my life, this stability which is so important to me I guess there's probably a little cost and once in a while my timing gets off or I run into a bad batch of ice or something but I you know it's really overall the balance is still very positive and then as we know it just starts to swing and it gets more negative and more negative and by that time my relationship with it I just have no choice. I'm a drinker and it's one of the most important stabilities of my life and there's just no question I'm gonna make whatever adjustments I have to have because drinking life seemed to me that there was I had almost like a built-in failure mechanism for some reason life didn't seem to work for me it seemed like i was fairly well equipped in the business of living life i should have gone out and have it be all okay but somehow i would go on out and the wheels kept coming off it you know everything i touched i started i was a great starter uh you know for the first 50 yards of 100 yard race i was pretty good just never finished and uh there's rooms are just full of people who know an awful lot about being good starters and poor finishers. And I had a frustration with life. It just seemed like, you know, and I really think we are so, our book talks about we are so self-centered that we, it never occurs to us that almost everybody else in the world is going through the same assessment that we are going through. I mean, we're just so positive that it's only our assessment. I think one of the great discoveries when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous is then at least we open it up to find out that alcoholics go through what we go through. You know, later on we find out that even some normies go through what we go through, and that's kind of distressing, you know, because we really don't like to identify with people who are normal. And we'd hate to think that we really have much in common. It would kind of lower our status and, you Know, it would be kind of distressing. It could be that the sorts of adjustments that we go through are just human adjustments, that everybody goes through them, that we experience them in a somewhat exaggerated manner. And for me, alcohol was just an enormously important, I don't think I could have made it through what I went through without medicating it. I mean, that was just the way it was. And so as the problem with my drinking just got bigger and bigger and people kept pointing to the problem, kept saying, Bob, you've got a drinking problem. No, I've got to drink an answer. Do not have a drinking program. It's got a little bit of difficulty with it, but I do not have a drinking problem, I gotta drink an answers. The other thing is drinking, drinking makes it tolerable. I can put up with the rest of that stuff. And they kept on saying, no, your answers become the problem. And every once in a while, I'd take a look at that. Every once in awhile when my, when I would get into enough trouble, I would seriously take a look at to see whether my answer had become my problem. And after a couple of days of abstinence or taking a look at it, it always seemed like, no. It was worth one more, you know, run at it and I'd go back out and take another run at it. Because in sobriety, I experienced an anxiety. My life didn't instantaneously get better. It didn't all of a sudden become what I thought you were telling me I'd become if I just wouldn't drink. So it seemed clear to me that abstinence or not drinking, not doing it was not the answer to my problem, and so conversely, drinking wasn't the issue. By the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was in enough trouble physically and socially and mentally and familially and civically with my alcohol drinking that I just had no choice. I had tried everything else. My family had had me see a psychiatrist and I was pretty active Catholic and I tried a lot of retreats and spiritual methodology and pretty active in the church and tried copying other people's behavior and I tried some interactions with police and judges and all those sorts of things. And I just had run out of things to do, and I had run on a rope. I just didn't know what to do and my life was just coming apart at the seams and finally after a period of time I turned myself into Alcoholics Anonymous. And I showed up at that door about as like we all showed up. I mean, I was confused and I was scared and the only reason I was there is I did not know what else to do. I literally did not know. I was diagnosed an alcoholic at age 19, and I thought that was about as goofy. You know, in 1961 or 2, that didn't seem like that was a possibility. Today, that wouldn't be very unusual, but it was a little unusual then, and I didn't like the diagnosis nor the identification. So I showed up scared and confused. What I found was to open a whole new adventure, the likes of which I had never expected, in the adventure of which I'm still involved and still the primary adventure of my life. I found a group of people who, it was like I'd come home. I found A Group of People, it Was Like Finding Your Family. It had been like being on a foreign planet and opening a door and finding your brothers and sisters and your mom and dad and your cousins and everybody and you walk in and gee, they look like you and they sound like you. They chew gum like you, they drive cars like you they talk like you they listen like you there was a level of familiarity It literally was just this awesome identification because for a long time, of course, we just kept getting more alienated and more alienating. We were in trouble with everybody around us, and so we severed most of the relationships. We were really just, you know, I mean, we Just people kept bouncing off of us, and by the time we get here, we're pretty alone. By the time We get here we aren't much like very many other people, and so our need levels are really high, and it was just wonderful, the experience I had in Alcoholics Anonymous, and It was magical. I mean, it just, I listened to you share things about yourself that I'd been hiding about me for an awfully long time. It was just an awe-filled experience for me for quite a while. The most wonderful thing about it is that I was able just to kind of let go and surrender. I came in and I was in enough trouble, a combination of enough trouble and the wonderful experience of having you know more about me than anybody else had ever known about me. And then presenting me with a way out of my dilemma was enough for me just to kind of let go and lay back and say, okay, I'm going to do what you tell me to do. And for a while that was it. I just went to six or seven meetings a week. I hooked into one of the men who is now my sponsor. Well, both the men were now my sponsors. Hooked into a couple of very active men and I just started to go to meetings. I started to do 12-step work. I would go to a meeting at 8 o'clock, and I'd get home about midnight. We'd stay late, and we'd talk AA, and they'd give advice. I was under the tutelage of just yesterday or the day before yesterday. I was over at my sponsor's house. He now has 36 years, 37 years of sobriety, and he's just a wonderful, calm, wise guy. I mean, he's got an enormous amount of common sense and a great program. He's been just a wonderfully active member of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since I've, well, ever since he came in. And he was perfect for me. Just couldn't have found a teacher who would have been more perfect. And he taught by example. I just kind of hung around him and did, you know, I've always been a copier, you Know, so I just kinda hung around Warren and started to copy Warren. And that's always been, my phoniness kinda saved me in all colleagues, as I came in as a phony, I'd look around, you Now, I mean, when I'm here, I wear jeans and a cowboy hat. When I'm in San Francisco, I wear a dress. And when I'M home, I work for, You Know, And I go, so whatever is kind of called. So when I showed up around Warren, I just started to copy Warren. And when I hung around people who drank the way I like to drink, I copied some pretty poor behavior and it seemed natural to me. And I got myself into a lot of trouble doing that. I started to copyright. Copy well behavior. In my life, that first year, the book talks about a number of at one point it talks about recreating your life, another point it just talks about almost like a transformation about our lives just having a spiritual experience and literally when Young talked to Roland about, Roland comes back and says isn't there any hope for me? Can't you do anything with me? Roland had gone over there and gone through treatment with the greatest psychologist in the world or psychiatrist in the world and comes back and he's drunk and he flies back and he, you know, and Young says I can't help you. You know, must be a pretty profoundly wise man with a sense of humility, and he said, I can't do anything with you. You're a hopeless alcoholic. I've not been effective with anybody of your type. If Roland knew one thing, he knew he was an exception. All alcoholics. If I were to stand up here and say 97% of all people, you would immediately stop listening to the 97% and listen for what I'm going to say about the 3%, because we would all identify with the 3% in the room. Everybody in this room is an exception, and jung told him that there from time to time there were some exceptions the people had complete transformations of personalities complete reorientations of personalities their whole value systems were changed their whole lives were changed and literally they were not the same people and from time and upon occasion that was happened and that was what he was trying to have take place in roland's life and he was unsuccessful and he recommended that roland somehow if roland could have that sort of spiritual transformation if you could have that change take place in his life. And Roland said, well, that's not too bad. I'm pretty active in my church. And Young looked at him and said, your church won't do it, which I think was also pretty interesting. I don't think it's impossible the churches do it but at least he knew enough about Roland and knew enough about his relationship with it that he said, the church is not going to do it. Now Roland came back and had that spiritual experience. He had it in the Oxford group and had it in Alcoholics Anonymous and he, of course, never took another drink and his life was okay. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had that experience of what James called the educational variety. And over a period of time, I made enough changes sufficient for me to remain sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, the power that is in the program. One of the great lines I ever heard Chuck Chamberlain give one time he went down to the Peachford, I don't even know the correct name of it, but it's a large symposium on alcoholism given in Atlanta, and it's something about the Peachfort Conference or something and a lot of the experts come from all over the country and all over the world Chuck was a wise member of Alcoholics Anonymous and never participated much in anything outside of Alcoholic Anonymous and he was asked to go to this conference and he did and I was at an AA conference with him shortly after he came back from it and someone asked him about what he thought about the interaction and how it went and he said a profound thing he said, you know, someone asked him do they understand AlcoholicsAnonymous and he says they don't know much about surrender i didn't think it was almost like a throwaway line i mean he wasn't trying to you know and i walked away and i thought about that and i really think the power in our program is the power of surrender our book talks about that we'll never be able to quit drinking based on self-knowledge you know i think that most of us come to alcoholist anonymous looking for an answer okay and the answer that most OFUS want is intellectual well something that makes sense to us. Explain it to me. The reason that most of us is we wanted the answer to be able to, we wanted to beable to understand it and we wanted control over the answer. Tell me what it is. If I agree with it and it makes sense to me and I can see the effect that it will have on me and I agree to undertake the effect it has on me, I'll do it. Now the problem is that we're the problem. You know what I mean? We're the program and we want to be able to understand and approve and agree with the answer before we implement it. and that just flat doesn't work I mean that combination kills more alcoholics but it seems I mean it almost seems impossible that you'd ever grasp or take an answer that you didn't understand, didn't agree with didn't approve of I mean why the heck would you ever do that that seems almost equally as irresponsible it's our lives I mean why wouldn't we if we care so much about how we live our life we want our lives to work so well I mean shouldn't we agree I mean, shouldn't we care? Shouldn't we have some understanding? Shouldn't мы think it's in our best interest? And the fact is that almost all of us have been trying desperately to do things that were in our best interest for an awful long time before we came to Alcoholics Anonymous and we almost killed ourselves. We almost killed yourselves. We did burn most of the bridges in our lives and lose many of the relationships in our lives and we lost considerable amounts of money and educations and children and husbands and wives and jobs and pride and we lost an awful lot of things trying to do the very best things for ourselves, trying desperately to have our lives come to order using every bit of intelligence, every bitof authority, every bito power, every bit o knowledge, every bita help that had ever come around us. We used all those things and we almost killed ourselves before we came to Al-Qaeda Islam. What we ran into, what I ran into was a group that was large enough, a power that was larger than me, that was big enough to allow me to surrender. I didn't even know that that's what I did. I did not even know that that's what I did. I just flat gave up and was able to listen. You spoke a language that was different than I'd ever heard before, and I became a sponge. And the reason I became an sponge is I kind of quit. I just quit. I'm a guy who, in all other conversations, I'm listening for how you want me to be. How am I supposed to be? What am I suppose to say? How funny am I supossed to be, how loud am I supposed to be what's my turn, what's mi time? and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I stopped doing that for a period of time it was just like, I just quit and I just listened and I was confusing I didn't understand it, it was a language of the heart it wasn't very intellectual I couldn't understand why the hell you stayed after meetings and talked to people about marital issues and job issues and money issues and children issues I didn' t know what those had to do with drinking and I didn''t know why anybody would ever ask about how to go home and have a conversation with their wife I mean I thought what in the heavens name is going on here And I didn't know that, so I just listened. And what I found is a group of people, I started to get a sense that people use the 12 steps of alcohol as synonymous to live rather than not to drink. I got a sense That you told me that the physical part of my disease was 10% of my disease and the other parts of it were a much wider swath. And that if I could apply those principles in my life, I wouldn't have to drink but after I listened to you for a while you weren't applying the principles just not to drink. You said that in your language a lot but you're applying the principles to improve your life. So the bad news is we have a disease, if we don't interfere with it and don't find an answer for it, it's going to kill us. And the good news is that in order to get well from the disease, you have to learn how to live. Therein lies, I think, the largest gift that Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer is for people who have problems that are destroying their lives, we offer them a solution, which is what everybody has been seeking since time started. The gift is that in order for you to get better from your disease, you will end up being wiser and maybe weller and having a better quality of life than you ever would have had had you never had the disease. There's the gift that I think alcoholism is good. The problem is that all you have to do to get that is die. How much do you have to give away to go get that? Well, you have to give everything to whatever extent your ego is in the game to whatever extend you use just your intellect and your own authority and your own power, you kind of block off the channels that I think that the program tries to use to have us have the changes in personality take place. That's spiritual. And I really think that what we find in Alcoholics Anonymous is that we come in and we have, that most of us try it on an intellectual basis. We find that most OFUs are so emotionally unstable that the emotion dominates the intellect. Okay? And that most OUs get squirrely. We can learn the principles of alcoholics anonymous, but they're unavailable to us because when we get in trouble, our emotions get so darn heightened that we can't. You know, you don't pull out your notes. You don't put out the big book when you're, you know, grabbing your child by the hair or screaming at your wife or running out of your work at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or writing a bad check. I mean, you just don't pulled it out on that time because you're—you know, I mean the ocean's roaring in your ears, you do, and you're just as crazy as we all are. And so what we find is that while the emotions dominate the intellect, the spirit dominates the emotions and brings an order that is someplace that is just literally unavailable in any other way and it brings a peace and it bring a type of solution that just is unavailable any other away. So the answer that I think the program has and has shown to us in our book and our book just keeps saying it and saying it and saying that we're the problem. Self-centeredness is the problem, ego is the problem. The answer is to find a relationship with God. The answer is to give up. The answer is surrender, okay? And most of us in this room surrendered enough that we literally altered one of the most important patterns in our lives, our alcohol and drug use. I mean it's pretty profound. We did that daily and we came in here and entered into a relationship with the program and principles such that our lives changed and we never drank again. That's awesome. But as awesome as that is, for some reason we then kind of reverse that process and as we know that drinking is only the symptom of our disease. If drinking is a symptom of your disease, when we stop drinking, our disease exhibits itself mentally and spiritually. When we stop drinking it isn't like the obsessiveness leaves. Most of us in the room know that we keep obsessiveness and compulsiveness and weirdness into sobriety. I know that most of you don't have any issues in sobriety, but hell, I even had issues in sobrietry. I know that's kind of disappointing and disgusting, but you know it's but we start to have issues, and at first, I think when we first come in and we're sober, we relate. Would someone over there grab me a cup of coffee? I have one, if there's any. Straight. The but notice this and this is what I think I'm talking a little bit longer but I'll probably talk less the second session and so what I the process that I went through and the process that I deal with today is thanks a lot I came to AA prior to coming to Alcoholics Anonymous I was absolutely convinced I was unique and different. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and I absolutely learned that I was not unique and different, that I became part of you and that was the phenomenon getting my personality out of the way I stopped being Bob. What I was looking for was an expert on Bob. I promise you I wanted someone who knew Bob so well he could look through Bob that I could even keep putting up the lies in the front and all those things and I want someone who could look right through Bob.I never found anybody I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I kind of stopped being Bob. And I became an alcoholic, and I found a hundred teachers. I found people who could look right through me. And I could bring an issue to them, and it didn't matter if they knew my aunt. It didn't mater if they new my mom and dad. It didn' t mater if the knew my employer because they were talking about principles. And the principles seemed to apply no matter what the personalities are. And the principle seemed to applied no matter what the circumstances were. and I had teachers and I had answers. But after about a year of sobriety when I started to ask a question, I got an answer and I wasn't sure you were right. I startedto reassert my ego and I startedtoreassert my individuality and Istarted to be more concerned with finding an expert on Bob because I thought you helped me with my alcoholism, I stopped drinking and Ihad these other issues that were happening in my life and Istarted to grasp and struggle and deal with those other issues and I became more and more convinced as time went on that the other issues that I had were Bob's issues. Because hell, you would help me deal with my alcoholism, but there must be some other stuff that I have. Once again, I'm just looking at my insides and your outsides. You know, I am so convinced that no one else has these problems that maybe maybe that if I have money issues and sex issues and parenting issues and work issues and ego issues and those sorts of things, those are the peculiarities of Bob. And now that you've really dealt with my alcoholism, I'll start working on those issues and I'll get it better. And the struggle that I've had in Alcoholics Anonymous has been that issue. And it's just the damnedest thing in the world. I mean, it just is, and I think it's absolutely endemic to human beings. I think it's normal that it just seems awesome that we can have the experience of surrender and transformation. That we can walk in here and have our lives be such when I read that big book, I couldn't believe in those 30 stories that those men and women whose lives were absolutely destroyed, came in and had some sort of experience and never drank again. I mean, that's awesome. That is awesome. And we have that experience, and yet we then don't seem to be able to as regularly as we would like to apply it to the other issues of our life. So the thing that I'm talking about and I want to bring up and recommend that we kind of discourse on is that ongoingly maybe the biggest power that we have in the program is surrender. And that what we've done is we've gotten out of relationship with surrender, and what we're done is we say, okay, I'll take it from here. This is my job. You've gotten me well. I must have... Now the work issue must be my issue. You've got me well, I'll work on my marriage. You've gotta get it done. You've done me well I'll do it. I'll get it. I'll go work on my finances. So the two things that we do that I think and it makes sense to us because that's what a good person would do. We take those things on so we're convinced that there are issues number one. And number two what we are dealing with is the problem and not the cause. We're dealing with the result, okay? We're at the end of the pipe where the water's coming out and we're trying to push the water back in the pipe. We're not at the edge of the end-of-the-pipe where there's a faucet. You know what I mean? So when we deal with money issues, we work on money. But money issues don't have much to do with money. They have to do it with ego and compulsiveness and a few other things, you know, until we really kind of... But we always work on the symptom. That's the problem that we had with alcoholism when we came to Alcoholics Anonymous we worked on the symptom. We were working on drinking and not drinking. So when we came to Alcoholics Anonymous they said just, we never spent any time working on not drinking, okay? We spent our time looking at the first step in surrender and then once we did that we started to work on the solution which is finding a power greater than ourselves. So, all right, I'm going to stop there and then we'll talk about and so what i what i think is we we i we lose i or we lose some of the profound identity with my recovery program and thinking that recovery program is going to be the answer to some of other issues that are going on in my life the whole world gives absolutely no encouragement for powerlessness i mean every message you get i mean you know the average american citizen today watches six or seven hours of television. I mean, it's just we are inundated with messages that say, hey, you can have everything. First of all, if you don't have what I'm advertising, you should be unhappy. I mean you should be really miserable. So what we have is about as much encouragement in our society. I mean and it's very subtle. We don't even show the product. You know, we don't even say much about the product, we just show a pair of breasts and the product you know. I mean it's very subtle that we just make connections to say you should be unhappy so there's an encouragement the commercial there's a whole psychology in our world today that i think encourages us being anxious upset the pace of the world is going very fast and there's just an enormous amount of change and uncertainty out there and then on top of that everybody what i think the whole encouragement that are that that everybody else will give you is increase your power be smarter look better okay be you know get in shape Take control of your life. Hell, you don't want to be... I mean, get in charge. And if you're really cool, I mean if you want to be a success, boy, you better be in charge and last night when Beverly talked about I didn't cause it, I can't cure it and I can' t control it. I mean I really think that an awful lot of us in Alcoholics Anonymous who do very, very well to start adapting that as the personal slogan in our own lives is that we didn' t cause our alcoholism, we can' d, you know, we didn't cause it. We can't cure it, and we cannot control it. And I really think that the longer we're around, that sometimes we really do try to control it, and what's even more interesting is if the answer is finding a relationship with the God of error and understanding, most of us have a relationship with God of control. We want to direct the answer, you know. Does that provoke any... Any ideas for that? Was my level of confusion that high? Level of just interest that profound? George has set up a mic over here. What we'd like to do is start dialoguing, and he will pass that to whoever has a question. You just identify yourself by your first name, and then we'll, I don't know if it's a question or a statement and then We can inject that in. It's not working, David. Just call them. Hi, my name is Jane. I'm a member of Al-Anon. I don' t want to talk about it. I don''t want to do that. I just wanted to say that I think in Al-Anon maybe we have it a little easier because when I came in and I was taught the steps I was told that I was powerless over people, places and things so it wasn't just alcoholism and that's really how I worked the steps so I think it's easier for us and I also agree with what you said about how everyone, the world now teaches us that we need power, because my alcoholic is my son. And I always feel the message you get is, you know, you need to control this child. He's not even a child, but I feel that the outside world is saying to me, you know... What's wrong with you? I mean, just this week he was in jail and I got all these messages. Why won't you do something? And all I know is that I can only come here and feel. I know what I'm doing is right, but it's only here that I have other people validate what I'm doing is right and the outside world just doesn't understand and I don't think we can change that so I have to keep coming here so that I can feel good about what I am doing and feel okay and not feel like I am being a bad mother and I am just letting them stay there it's totally against what we've learned our whole lives it's like most profound things we usually have to do it's not black and white and we have to seeming the opposite things at once so we have a situation that we didn't cause can't cure and can't control it was a situation we come here and we have to surrender but then there also comes a point where we have take action and i think you know there there comes a plant where we have a role you know to play in the process and i think for me what i found i came in on the action i took at first was just to be very very very active in alcoholist anonymous and just do a hell of a lot of blocking and hackling and alcoholism. And for, I think for a very considerable period of time, that was exactly what I was supposed to do. And I did not, I had very significant issues in my life and I almost didn't notice them for the first year of my sobriety. I mean, they were just so zoned out and tuned in and I just so needed to concentrate on certain things I was doing in AA. And I don't recommend that, that that's exactly the way you're supposed to be. That just happens to be the way I was. Just reporting to you the way it was for me. And then little by little, it was almost as if my life got handed back to me. And little by little, I got issues handed to me, you know, like invitations to get back and participate in life. Issues about how I was as a parent, issues about how I was a worker, issue about how it was as husband, finance, sex, every, you don't think I could have handled those all at once. I don't think I couldn't handle the instructions about how to do those different things. And as I increased in my growth, and there came a time when the invitation for me wasn't to go to more meetings, where the invitation for me was to start to take actions in those arenas of my life, directed action. Maybe with a sponsor, or maybe through insights that I got. And there comes a time where the most behavior that you can take that's most consistent with Alcoholics Anonymous has to do with changing behavior. Not going to another meeting. There comes a time when some of the things that we're supposed to do with our program about gets personal, gets private, where what we have is we have too much activity and not enough action. And the action starts to get personal. And we then start to, you know, we have to have a kind of a time where you stand in front of the truth and have a discussion with yourself and have another one of those surrender experiences. Wait a minute. he wants it on tape say who you are you got an ego problem I'm Tom I'm an alcoholic and I have felt when I came in I heard the powerlessness story and I hear you say I'm not responsible for the alcoholism and I can't do that much about it but I am responsible for the cure and then when I know Well, and I'm responsible for that. And then I have to get back into the things I have to do that are responsible to take care of my disease. And then it seems like the next thing I know, I'm back into a lot of trouble. I'm going back into control situation again. So it sort of goes back and forth. You know, when do I turn this thing over? I can't just, you know, it would be nice to come in and say, I'm just going to turn this thing over and not do anything more about that. But that doesn't work that way. I still have to be responsible for my actions. Anyway, any comments on that I'd like to hear? Well, I think it's a dichotomy. I think we are an ant on a log going down a river. When it goes around the bend, it looks like we're steering it. You know, but there is, you know, so, I mean, there literally is. And the log's a pretty big log, and there's lots of different things and lots of places an ant could go in the log. You know, there's a lot of, it is, but I think you very succinctly put the dilemma. I think it's the dilemma of life. I think It's the Dilemma of Being a Parent. I mean, how the hell do you, you know, I get, my child would break a window and, you know, it just seemed like our kids were, are, have been often in trouble. And we just would regularly have other parents come to our house and talk to us about our kids. Our kids were in a fight with someone. Like, their kids just never fought. You know, I mean, it's just, you know, in an AA, I don't know. So we'd say yes. And they'd say, well, you guarantee me your child won't do that again. And I'd say no. First of all, you Know, and they'd look at me like I was just crazy. And I said, I can't guarantee. I said I will punish my child. I said i will support his not doing it again. But I can t guarantee that my child, I d n't control my child And they'd look, you know, I mean, not always, but some of them would look at me and say, why don't you control your child? Because I don't control me. You know what I mean? That's really going to disappoint you when you think you're worried about my kid. You've got me out of control in the neighborhood. You've Got a Much Bigger Problem. He's only got his slingshot. I've got... and yet i am responsible now being responsible and being powerless at once okay maybe is the mystery maybe all great things you know us doing it and yet turning it over okay i mean then the bible talks about dying to live and all those different i mean i think that is the mystery of life i really think that's the you know the issue that everybody in this program deals with and i think there's a type of wisdom with it and i Think we have uh i we share that in a uh i mean just your thing when someone comes to a meeting and just says you know i blew it today i mean i just you know really got into it with my spouse or i just went and did something I wasn't supposed to do. We all have this deep sympathy. We especially have that sympathy and understanding to the new person. I think sometimes we don't have enough the depth of sympathy and understanding to the person who's been sober quite a while in those circumstances. Just the craziness. This book talks regularly in the first three chapters about the state of mind preceding the first drink of alcohol. It says that we use some flimsy little excuse, some crazy, you know, you look back on it and just some crazy thinking goes through that you'd, you Know, in backwards analysis of it, it wouldn't be an excuse to go do that behavior anyway. It talks about craving, that once we start a behavior, that we get started in a process that we have no control over. Now I think, if that's true about active alcoholism, I happen to think that those phenomenons are what we're dealing with and sobriety. We're dealing with the same states of mind and sobrietty. One of the little known, I'll give you a piece of AA trivia. Everybody talks about changes from the original book to the present book. And one of the changes we say, we had a spiritual experience and now we talk about a spiritual awakening rather than a spiritual experiment. I think it's in a doctor's opinion. They talk about being an ex-alcoholic. And in the book today, it's an ex-problem drinker. But in the original edition of the big book, it says ex-alcoholic. And today we know where there aren't ex-alkoholics. And we know... Why am I still so actively involved in my recovery in a vital sort of way with 22 years of sobriety? Hell, it is not for a drinking issue that I had 22 years ago. is for a living issue that I have today. I mean, I need to be part of this process to keep those principles involved in my life and keep them in action. I mean... Part of what I'm dealing with is the problem of being a human being. I mean it's almost as if one of the analogies I use is it's as if you kept to keep the marbles spinning around the sides of the bowl. The resting spot for the marble is in the bottom of the bow. So when I stop, when I go asleep, when I turn off, when I forget who I am, when I'm not awake, when I don't have a power greater than myself, when I're not in action in my program, the damn marble is in the bottom of the bowl. And the resting position has to do with fear and anxiety and demoralization and all the sorts of mental conditions that I identify with my alcoholism. They're always available to me. They're available to be today. And I don' t say that like I'm some sort of goof. I mean, I don't say that like I'm a sick person. I just think that's a fact. That, I mean... Disappointingly today, with 22 years of sobriety, I can summon a level of craziness. It's just a gift. I mean it's just... It's... It's a gift, you know? And we support each other. And I'm not supporting crazy... I'm regularly crazy. But I want you to know that at any given time, I think I can, without a thought without a thought I have all those instinctive reactions and I'm no longer willing to one of the things that is so awesome one of most wonderful things I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is a wise man once told me you have no control about your thoughts or reactions. If someone drops a hammer on your foot but I don't care how old you are or how sober you are, you may very well want to punch them in the nose. It depends upon your instinctive reactions. You may want to run away, but you're going to have an instinctive reaction that you will not have much control of. It's just going to flat be there in front of your nose. But because of my being able to walk with you and because of me being able to work in Alcoholics Anonymous, I seldom punch people in the notes. i don't slap my children like i did at one time okay i don' t do a number of behaviors that i used to instinctively do when i got in front of something that i was afraid of and didn't know what to do because i now have a level you've given me some space between me and me i have a really i have just enough distrust just enough healthy distrust of my own actions sometime that i will take a look at a standard other than my own standard other than what my own ego wants to do, you put something between me and me at times when my emotions dominate my life. And that's how powerlessness today works positively in my life, it gives me an access to something other than my ego at a time when I'm about ready to go take a course of action which is destructive to my life and when we want to do something, we don't want access to that power, we want the opposite, okay? We don't want the answer, we want the problem. Yeah, when I, I remember when I was in treatment last time and I can seem to identify it, it was about two weeks into the treatment period and I didn't know what was happening but I must have went through that surrendering process and uh and i and i know i must have because but because almost immediately my my addictive psyche nature was selecting one of my other addictions because i started getting away from the alcohol and i could almost feel myself looking for another comfort zone almost immediately i can still remember that and i didn't know what was happening though when i come out of that treatment of course i come in aaa and i an aaa got me and i more or less began the process but i believe that for me the things that catch 22 process you know the minute we stop trying to stay with this recovery process that we don't know how to do then these other addictions will kill us anyways and eventually we'll get so frustrated we'll go back to the one we love the best and the only one i'm really comfortable was my alcohol and i believe that's probably why they said in that book and always wondered that and i've just been talking about it lately is they didn't say alcoholism is cunning baffling and powerful and they didn'T say the alcoholic was cunning bafling and powerful. He said alcohol, and I believe that when they said that, they knew that's the very thing I love the most, and the very thing I'll always go to when I'm really, really, really up against it. If anything else fails in my life, I'm going to go for the alcohol. And I believe that's what they meant, you know? And so, for me, even though it's frustrating and hot, and you lose a lot of heart, and it's distasteful at times, you've got to stay in this process. You've got to just stay in the process. And I keep saying to myself, you're not going to get a goddamn report card i keep waiting for a report card to come in the mail ain't gonna be no fucking report cards my report card is not drinking today i must be doing something good and i feel good about not drinking and i think that's that means i'm doing something right i guess and i do think the world gives you a report car not like not like an authoritative teacher i think the word reports back to us regularly we don't often listen to it but i i do think that the world will report back that what you're doing doesn't work, or the world will report back that it confirms what works and disconfirms what doesn't work. I didn't notice that for a long time. I thought it was different. Yeah, Tom? We've got a mic there. Hi, Bob. I'm John from An Alcoholic. Hi, John. This one ought to be a good one for you. As it relates to alcohol and powerlessness and my surrender, that was really easy for me. You know, I just nearly drank myself to death. The question is, as far as it relates to the other issues in my life, I felt like it was interesting that you related our intellect to dealing with the problem and getting to the solution. Well, my question is how do you surrender? You know, my mind says, oh, well, I'll make a decision. I'm going to surrender on this and be powerless over my finances or my relationships. You know how do you do that? I mean... Okay. This may really disappoint you, but you do it by doing it. there's a problems are what time are we stopping this for the first coffee break what maybe we'll handle this and take problems are kept in place with a lie the the lie that kept our alcoholism in place of course is that alcohol was not our problem it's a funny sort of thing we know that alcoholism is a problem, and drinking was the symptom of the problem. But each of us kept telling ourselves we really don't have a problem. The need... Alcohol was a treasure. Alcohol was an answer. Alcohol and drugs were primarily... They were just awesomely important in our lives, and we protected them with everything we had. We just kept people away. We didn't have conversation with people or contact with people who were a threat to our use. Right? Okay? We just didn't want to be around people like that, so we surrounded ourselves with people who kind of supported our view of the universe. And so we built a wall of protection around the biggest problem and issue we had was our alcoholism, okay? Now if you talked to people at some time when our drinking became obvious and kind of undeniable, we would talk to people and say, boy, we'd like to stop or we wouldn't want that problem. We started to tell kind of lies or stories about our drinking, but there came a time where we stood in front of our alcoholism, we stood before it like the truth with all our clothes up, stark naked in front of our alcoholicism. And we stood infront of that. Our lives changed. There's something about the truth that is so profound that when you stand in front of it with nothing else between it and you, your life's going to change. You know how when we say in the program if you come to Alcoholics Donovan and you're exposed to the answer to the problem, you may go back and drink but it is not going to be the same. There's going to be something that's going to hound you. That's, I think, what truth does. Now most of us, when we have other issues in our lives, and I suggest to you that there may not be other issues, but when we have Other Issues in Our Lives, maybe the same issue with different clothes on. We, when I had a gambling issue in my life, you talk to me, I'd say, boy, I really would like to quit gambling. Go talk to my wife and find out if she thought I wanted to quit gambling. Go talk with my business partner. I mean, the truth was, I didn't want to quit gambling. Now, I talked like I wanted to quit gambling. I didn' t want to quick gambling. You know, I talk like I'd like to get up in the morning and go to work. I talk like I like to stay at work. I mean I didn''t want to do those things. So it was a lie. I mean those things were complaints. Gee, I wish my life was different. What do you want to about it? Oh, nothing. Oh, nothing. I mean you know there are two things that keep problems in place in your life. They're like, if you had a very serious problem, when I have a very serious problem in my life, the biggest protection I could ever have to not have to deal with it would be confusion. If I really wanted to wrap it in something so that I'd never have to deal With them, I'd wrap it and confusion. Gee, I just love to do. I don't know how. How do you do this? How do you work? I mean, when you have great questions, how do you work now? You don't want an answer because if I ever got the answer to that question, I might have to go work. You know, I don' t want to go work. I want to ask the question, how do you work? Now, it doesn't matter that there's a hundred million people in the United States that work. Yeah, I mean I'm asking like what's the meaning of life? Like you just, you know, like it's a mystery. I mean, there are people with IQs, you know, two-thirds of what I've got walking around and they work. They just go do it. You know, I mean they, I'm telling you that I asked those questions for a long time so the two things that i see that people that i wrap my issues in and other people wrap their issues in is first of all confusion so they keep asking questions about it because as long as you keep asking question about it you may not have to do anything about it and then once you get the questions you know start to fray a little bit at the edges you know when the group says you know it's the sixth time that that dork has talked to me about that problem, or I'm his eighth sponsor. The other one is apathy. I mean, I know what to do, I just can't get myself to do it. Those are the two things. I either don't know what to do and I'm confused, orIi know whatto do and i can't motivate myself to get to it. And those are, the experience of those I think are very real, and that's what I did with my alcoholism, that's why I've done with every serious problem in my life. The truth is, is that every serious, persistent problem in my life, I planted. I put in place. I fertilized it. I built a fence around it. I put the guard dog out in front, okay? And anybody who got within a 15-block radius of my problem started to experience resistance to their presence, okay, when they even got near it. Now, you talk to me and I'd say, how do you get rid of that? I think if you got the guys with the submachine guns and just asked them to kind of move away, Bob, and then those Dobermans. God, Bob. I really think those DoBERmans are a little too much. And I don't think the fence needs to be 15 feet tall, Bob I mean, God, if it was about a four-foot fence, Bob people might be able to leap over it and help you. But 16 feet is excessive with a concertina wire on the top. Those electrical charges, Bob, they're killing people. All you've got to do is maim them. They'll go away. I say, well, I really want to deal with this. I really would like to. Do you really think it would help if I took the fence down? Well, I don't know. I mean, we are awesome. I mean we are awesome with our duality and wanting to deal with problems. I mean, we're dealing with exactly... I mean they're just so important to us. And your alcoholism was so important to you that you almost died. That's how you attach to things. I mean the issues that we run into with stability is the second layer of recovery when you get abstinence and you start to get the principles start to act in your life and as you go forward And as you grow, you move forward. As you move foward, you start to bump into you. You bump into other issues in recovery. And you do it because you're growing. It seems like the opposite. It seems that you're discovering problems. I mean, we are the goofiest people. We feel bad about discovering problems! We do. So the first thing we do is we hide it, or we lie about it for a while, and then, you know, I mean, it just keeps coming up and it comes up so profoundly that you get to the point where you almost can't hide it anymore. But, I meantime, almost all of us have two or three major themes in our life that have a persistence that is just awesome and that will be the test, I think, ongoingly as to what the quality of your experience of recovery is and some of us who keep getting those ongoing requests who don't deal with it will go back drinking. and I think that's what drives you know if only half the people who come to Alcoholics Don't Must Recover there's a hell of a lot of people who go back you know if someone came in this room and said how many people in thisroom are going to die of alcoholism I think the answer is half in thisroom that's crazy but I mean the truth is if we convened this meeting 20 years from now there'd be a hell of lot ofpeople who would not be in this from the disease is awesome and we're so darn used to people getting well from the disease i mean we just start to assume people get well and i think that's wonderful i think the