The Double Life – Workshop – 2023 – Part 2 of 6 – Bob D.

I'm Bob and I'm an alcoholic. Some of those jokes were so old that you'd heard them so many times there were people laughing before the punchline. That's called premature ejaculation I am my favorite comic and my favorite audience I would say oh this is I shouldn't even tell you this yeah what the hell this thing about this I wish this wasn't recorded because there's a whole bunch of stuff i could talk about um many many years ago i was uh listening to a fifth step it was going the beginning that started going all right and then we get to the last part you know the sex inventory and i you know i'm instructed by the big book not to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We don't, we don't have a judgment. We'll have an opinion. We just, we just listen. We just if you're doing something that's hurting yourself, we'll help you to stop hurting yourself that basically, that's all we do. It's not a moral thing. But even though I'm instructed not to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct about partway through this, I had to stop and I had to say something i said listen you know you have got to stop masturbating and he says he looks up how come well because i'm trying to listen to your fifth step for god's sakes take take that off the recording If Clancy were to hear that, he'd blungeon me with a big book. In Alcoholics Anonymous, if you try imperfectly to do this stuff in your life, there's a lot of things that happen to us or for through us or it could be referred to as promises a lot in the big book you know every everybody reads the most groups around the world read the ninth step promises and i get it because they're they're flowery you know new freedom and new happiness not really you could it's the kind of stuff you could put on a hallmark card in a recovery bookstore but some of the other promises are just just as good and then there's unwritten promises that just come about as a result of the cause and effect and a lot of the things that are laid out in our book they're they just they're laid out three parts they describe an identifiable problem when as you're reading it you can go yeah it starts in the beginning not drinking restless, irritable, discontent yeah you know you get on and on prone to misery yeah and then it gives you actions to take and then it gives me what is referred to often as the promises the results it's the cause and effect of the actions one of the parts that there's no promise in the book that states this I think in its totality but in the beginning of chapter 6 into action when it's starting to bring us to the actions in the fifth step But it says something pretty interesting. It says, more than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor. To the outer world, he presents his stage character. This is the one he likes his fellows to see. He wants to enjoy a certain reputation, but he knows in his heart he doesn't deserve it. This inconsistency is made worse by the things he does on his sprees. Coming to his senses, he has revolted at certain episodes he vaguely remembers. These memories are a nightmare. He trembles to think someone might have observed him. As fast as he can, he pushes these memories far inside himself. He hopes they will never see the light of day. He is under constant fear and tension. I had a friend back in the late 70s, early 80s, used to say something frequently in meetings. He used to see the difference between an alcoholic and your average sociopathic bum bushwhacker is that the alcoholic has a conscience. And it's part of one of the elements that fuels the drinking and the need and the inability to stay comfortable sober because I'm tormented and haunted by my conscience. And I'm not a sociopath. There are sociopaths that come in and out of AA, and some of them stay for decades, but they seem to have that disconnect. And I don't have that. And I was talking to someone before this morning, before this meeting started, and he said something to me that I've said to myself and I've had dozens of sponsees when they're new say to me that I said it. I don'T know who I am. I've tried to be so many things to so many people driven by a fear of what you think of me, that I've lost who I am. And I don't know. And you see evidence of this in early sobriety frequently, especially if you ever watch two single people that are newly sober starting to date in early sobriery. Oh my God, it's so funny. Because they don't knows who they are. They'll have a conversation and the guy will say to the girl Would you go out to dinner? Yeah. Where would you like to go? Oh, I don't know. Well, what do you like to eat? I don'T know. What do you like to eat we've tried to be so many things to so many people we've lost ourselves and you know, and it takes a while in sobriety. I think for some of us to to wake up to who we are. I mean, I found I discovered stuff in sobriety that I really liked that I would have never imagined because I have that contempt prior to investigation thing it talks about in one of the appendixes. So you can present me with things and self-centered fear will immediately go, no, I don't like that. Well, you never tried. Yeah, but I know I like it. I just know crap, you know? And yet in sobrietty as I started to find who I was and trust God more, I started to take some things that to most people wouldn't be risks. But if you're driven by a hundred forms of fear, they're risky. I remember my first, I don't know, eight years, eight, 10 years maybe, eight or nine years, I guess, of sobriety. I had a lot of friends in AA that snow skied and they're always trying to get me to go. And I just keep telling them, ah, I don't really like that. Well, I'd never been. What's really going on, the truth is, I'm afraid of trying it and looking stupid. I'm a friend of falling down. I'm afraid of hurting myself. I'm Afraid of people laughing at me on the slopes. Oh my God, it was just... So I'm one of those kind of guys that you can't reject me because I'll reject me first so I don't go and I was about nine nine years sober and I finally this guy he had been a ski instructor he was a pretty good skier and he got me to go up to Brian Head and he got my name he got on these skis and god it's so awkward I feel like a newborn deer you know trying to walk in these boots and oh my god it was horrible and he takes me up to this top of this like it must have been a three mile high mountain that's straight down as the they called it the bunny hill but i don't think it was the bunny right and oh and here's the hard part we're on the ski lift you know that you sit on that thing your skis dangling and holding on and And you're supposed to get off when you get to the top. Well, I don't know how to stand up very well in skis. So the minute my skis hit the ground, I fall. Now there's people coming in cussing me from behind me off the next lift thing. And I just got up. I said, I want to go back to the lodge. This is horrible. He says, no, no. I'm going to show you what to do with it. You'll love this. You'll love this. He was telling me, he said, you got to make a wedge. It's like a pizza, piece of pizza, right? You got to Make the Wedge. You got go down. And I go about 10 feet and I fall. I get up. I go above 10 feet. And I fall, I go back there. And all I finally get down to the bottom of the mountains. I said, OK, I've tried it. I don't like it. This is not for me. And he says, listen, you're close to getting it. I said you've got to be kidding me. I'll have broken bones before the day's over. And he says, I watched you. Here's what you're doing. He said, as you start to go down the hill, you get afraid. Yeah? And when you get scared, when you're afraid, you lean back because you're scared of falling down the hill. It's an instinct. He said the minute you lean back, you fall. He said, here's what you need to do. You need to lean into the fall as if you're going to try to fall downhill. Lean forward, and he said, you'll stabilize. And I thought, that's crazy. He's asking me to do something that's completely contrary to my emotional reaction. Maybe if you've got a good sponsor, he's asking you to do things like that too. In the beginning of chapter 5, In the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, it talks about contrary action. It says all the steps, everything we do in AA runs contrary to our desires, to what we feel. And it's funny how as you start to develop this atrophied, unused trust muscle and start trusting God, you start leaning into your fears. You know, and you start being willing to walk through them. And over the years, I've had to face a lot of stuff. And I think it's... The more fear I walk through, the more I trust God. It's like an unused muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And this is essential to my recovery because I have to develop this trust with God. And if I don't, when the wheels come off of my life and I'm terrified and drinking or suicide is a possibility, if I do not have something I can trust in in the middle of the storm of emotions, I've got nothing. theory and belief and faith is not enough in those times I have to have an experience with trusting God and knowing not because you say but knowing from my own personal experience he's got me, he's always had me and he always will the covenant is unbreakable I can break it but it's unbreakables on his end so this walking through the fears and discovering who you are starts something started happening in me as I discovered who I was I started to live who I was and be who I was and one of the great fears I had was what you'd think of me and so it took me a while with my sponsor in early sobriety before I could start being transparent with Him. You know, I can be transparent about the good stuff, but when I've just done something I don't feel very good about. And I've always... Here's a funny thing I have. If I do something that I judge myself harshly for or feel ashamed of, I imagine that everyone that would find out what I did would feel the same way. I've also imagined that if you knew about me what I know about me, you'd feel about me the way I feel about me. And so that kept me closed off for a while. But you know what happens, I mean, you get to these points where I love that paragraph in chapter 5 where it talks about we made decisions based on self which later placed us in that position to be hurt. And you do things because, you know, trouble always starts out looking like fun. And you make those stupid, self-gratifying, self-grandizing, self defensive actions and you get, you're in trouble. You got trouble here. And I don't want you to know because I judge myself harshly. I am not a sociopath. I can do a lot of crazy, horrible things but my conscience just beats me up and it drives me to imagine that if you knew about me what I know about me you'd feel about me the way I feel about you and that's bad so what happens is you get yourself back into a corner and it gets that place where you're in such emotional distress and pain that man, you've got to do something there's a desperation And you think the desperation of getting sober is bad? The desperation in sobriety from actions done on self-will can even be worse. You know, one of the things it says in here, it's so interesting. It says, the inconsistency, and I was talking about things we do on our sprees. The inconsistence is made worse by the things he does on his sprees now. Now, most people think that's just drinking. I have had self-gratification, self-will, self-defensive sprees, self-willed run riot sprees in my sobriety. And then it says, coming to his senses. You ever just been on a tear and all of a sudden you come to your senses and go, what? Oh my God, what did I do? I told my boss I was going to rip his face off what am I doing here you know I was 8 years sober before I hit a bottom with violence and anger it was horrible, I could have went to prison I love this line coming to his senses and I remember after banging this guy's head against the hood of his car and snapping out of it It was like, and the guy, he was possibly one of us. And he sort of was looking for help, I think, but he robbed me, right? And when we caught him, he said, well, I knew you were an A.A. I thought you'd understand. That's what snapped me. I just started banging his head against it. My employees had him spread-eagled over the hood of his car. And I finally came to my senses. And I went back later through the book, through working with others to see if there's a part in there where it says bludgeoning a new guy might be useful. It doesn't say that in there. I mean, and I felt so ashamed of myself. And sometimes pain and shame and remorse is the essence of the sixth step. How do you become entirely ready? And I tell you, that was over 35 years ago, that last incidence. I've not had one since. And I don't know if that's the kind of bottom you have to have for all your defects, but I had it with that one. Until you get to that place, you can't stand yourself. And I've never gone back into those actions since then. Not even close. So these things he vaguely remembers. It's like a whiteout. You know, you're sober, but you're not even... Like, who's in charge when you're in the middle of rage? Who's in church when you've got to be sober? Who's charged in the midst of lust? You told your sponsor, she's a new girl. I'm not going to go with her. Next thing you know, I have a sponsee. He says, I met this new girl at a meeting. She's a witch. I said, what do you mean she's a bitch? Well, I was giving her a ride home. She put her hand on my thigh and she turned me into a hotel. I mean, into a motel. And he was aghast because he's not that kind of guy. but he didn't understand see I think sometimes as you start to wake up to who you are and all of it I mean all of your weaknesses your propensity maybe to anger lust you start learning how to I started to learn how to protect Bob from Bob because there's only one person on the planet that can destroy you, and it's you. And if you don't learn how to protect you from you, you're going to have troubles here. That's why the surrender principle is sort of the bedrock of Alcoholics Anonymous because I've got to get my life out of the hands of the idiot and start living by spiritual principles and accountability. And when you start finding out who you are, you start developing something that most alcoholics don't know. We don't even know what it is, and that's integrity. Integrity comes from Latin with integral. It means one. When you have integrity, you have one mind. You're one person. You're not the person that says this and does that. You're the person who does what they say they're going to do, that professes to live by certain spiritual principles and then makes whatever effort is necessary to be that. You've got to be the guy you need to be. And it's not the guy somebody else wants you to be, it's the guy, you know, in here you need to be and that's when integrity is your one person. See, I try to get sober, I don't even know who I am, I'm such a flake because if you came to me and said, you know, I need some help, I're moving this weekend, Could you help me? Well, I want to look like a good guy. Yes, I would. And then come Saturday when I'm supposed to meet you, something else just came up. You know what I mean? And I have an excuse factory in my head that can produce some excuses that, oh, my God, so you won't be mad at me. Because I want the bragging rights of being a kind, good, helping guy without doing nothing. So there's no integrity in that because I'm like several different people and I've got to be one person. And finding out who you are here is, it can be, for me, parts of it were a little frightening, but then it resolves itself into comfort the frightening part is that I'm afraid that I am going to discover I am someone I can't stand and I will have to kill myself and to my amazement it's the opposite that happens what I discover is I am not perfect but I am somebody who I kind of like I would rather with all my defects and all my problems throughout the years I would Rather have those than yours not that there's anything wrong with you but i've come i can navigate my own self-centeredness it takes it takes years to learn how to do that in sobriety to start to be familiar and and i uh it's like you have to become you got to know your enemy You've got to know the chatter. You've Got to Know What's Going On Here. Because if you don't, it just ambushes you. Your head can ambush you if you Don't Understand That This Is The Selfish Chatter Of An Ego That Wants To Control You. And Wilson Says Something In The 12 Steps And 12 Traditions that's kind of funny, but my God, does it seem to be true in my life? He says that towards the end, I think it's in step 12. He says we've been talking a lot about problems and there's a lot to talk about. Sometimes I'll call my sponsor about the good stuff, but I call my sponsor if it's a sense of urgency, it's because I got a problem. And he says we talk a lot about problems. And then he says, why? And I think this is funny. He says, well, it's because we're problem people. I have a friend who considers himself a golf guy because he's into golf. Golf's his center of his life. Problems are the center of mind. I got a mind that is like a problem-seeking missile. It's constantly doing threat assessments. It doesn't see good. It'll scan over good to find bad and if you don't think you're like that sit for 20 minutes and ponder your future and see if you spiral up or down right because the mind the ego is only concerned with things that it can control or defend itself against and so i i'm a defensive kind of guy and i'll tell you come Waken up. A part of this awakening, and this is true regardless of whether you're an agnostic, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a Native American, whatever. It doesn't matter. We all have the same experience. A partof this awakening is to wake up to your enemy. It was put to me very well in early sobriety. I was at a meeting at the old Wano Club and after the meeting a guy named Joe came up to me and he said I shared some little thing in the meeting I don't even know what it was and he came up to me he said kid you need to take step three and I said to Joe I said Joe I can't take step three and he says why not I said because I don' t believe in God he said you don't have to believe in God to take step three I said Joe the steps are right there on the wall I said Joe, step two, came to believe. Haven't done that. Step three, God is who we understand. Don't have that. I can't take step three. He says, listen, kid, I'll tell you once again, you don't have to believe in God to take the third step. He said, I will tell you what. You turn your will and your life over to this chair, and he points to a chair in the Alano Club. He says I promise you an instantaneous transformational miracle. I thought, all right, Joe, I turn my will and life over the chair. Joe gets this big grin on his face. He says, well, the miracle is your life's no longer in the hands of an idiot. And I got it. I mean, I was around AA just enough that I got that was the truth. Because if I could have stepped back from myself the last several years and even well into my sobriety through some of the self-will binges and I watched me as maybe my friends, family, neighbors had watched me. Could anyone watching Bob come to any conclusion that whoever's making decisions for him must be out to kill him? And yet it never, when you have the justifying, rationalizing, defending and explaining mind that chatters all the time and makes nonsense seem sensible, when you have that kind of mind, it never looks that way to me. Never. I can explain anything. I can explain anything, and so to know your enemy here is a big deal, and that's what a big piece of Alcoholics Anonymous is to diligently identify the symptoms of the ego, of this bondage of self, because we're supposed to during the day step 10, watch watch for evidence watch for evidence that the ego is coming back again, for selfishness dishonesty, resentment or fear and at night I look to see because if I'm the thing about I've watched a lot of really good men and women I seem to see more men die of this disease or drink again after years and one of the symptoms of how it happens right before they drink is that they get so full of themselves that you can't tell them anything they're defended you can even talk to them you try and they just they just have that wall up but that's self-righteous don't they get angry they feel threatened if you try to to try to question them about what they're doing and even try to point out to them what seems, to everybody around them, obvious. They get angry and they get defensive. Because with the ego come certain things. Entitlement. That's a bad deal, entitlement. Easily offended. You catch me being offended you'll catch me with a whole bunch of ego going on opinions resentments fears worry i i have i have in sobriety my early days of sobriery before i really worked the steps and even after working the steps i still get little tiny things it's just dialed down a lot it's not like it was when i was new but when i was new, I would get full of anxiety to the point where I'm losing it here. I feel like I'm having a nervous breakdown. And I thank God I had a good sponsor talk me off the ledge. He was so good with this because, and I'm pretty good with the guys I sponsored, because I would go to him and I'm just nuts. And he'd always bring me back to where you are and where God is. I'd be afraid of all this stuff that's going to happen and just, this is going to happened and that's gonna happen. And he'd say, but right this second, is everything all right? I go, yeah, yeah. Right. The second I tell you by the end of the month, I'm not going to be able to pay my rent. And I'm like, no, no. No, I know. I know, I Know. I Know, but, but right. This second, right this moment is everything. All right. And he would keep saying that until eventually he would wear me down and get me to concede that. Yes. Right this moment, everything's all right. He'd go, good. That's good. When it's no longer OK right now, you and I are going to have something to work with here. But let's stop trying to clear up the wreckage of your future. And let's stop trying To solve problems that haven't occurred yet. And what he's what's he doing? He's bringing me back to the great reality. You know, Wilson says something uh that i didn't understand he says that he felt like he'd been rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence and i i went to a guy there was a guy sponsored who taught as a science teacher because i meant fourth dimension sounded like something out of a out of robert heinlein book or something asthma or it's like science fiction he kind of fourth dimension and i went to this guy and ask him what so it's sad and he said well there's there's he said now that one time we only thought people thought there was three dimensions there was height width and depth and then he said physicists and scientists started realizing there's more than three two three dimensions and now that he said he told me this I don't know what it is today this was 40 years ago I suppose He said, 40 years ago, he told me, he said, now they think there's 10 or more dimensions. So I said, but what's the fourth dimension? He said well Einstein believed it was time. In other words, this book is so many inches high, so many ounces wide, so many answers deep at this moment, a moment from now, the dimensions can change because time is fluid like everything else in the universe. So very interesting, but I got back to the important stuff. So that's nice, but what's that to do with me? Because I'm a me kind of concerned guy. And he said, well, maybe you're disconnected from time in your life. And I've thought about that over the years. and here's a sad truth I don't live in the moment in the present much I live a lot in the past reminiscing and just kind of going over things that I'd done and happened to me etc. and resentments all my resentments are stuff in the future getting afraid about things that might happen or could happen but right now The fourth dimension, I'm not here much. I think, I mean, because of AA and I work with a lot of newcomers and stuff that brings me out of myself and into the present intermittently, I think I do like drive-bys in the present, you know, just come back to my head again. But I probably have been in, if the fourth dimension is the moment, the present. I probably experienced more of that as a result of the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous than I ever did, except possibly in the early days of drinking. I'm amazed over the years how AlcoholicsAnonymous produces slowly the most sought-after effect produced quickly by alcohol. Because I remember this experience, and maybe you've had it, where you walk into a bar and you're so stuck up in your head. that you're not even there. I mean, you're there, but you're not really there. It's like looking out from a deep cavern inside of me and all the stupid people, and they got the jukeboxes playing. I don't even like that kind of music. And about five drinks, I start thinking, man, I kind of like that song. Do you hear the bass line in that? That's amazing. What's happening is I'm coming into the moment. I'm starting to see the reality around me. The people start to seem interested where I just fearfully judged them from up in here and now I'm starting to become present. And then what happened to me is what happens to all chronic alcoholics in this progressive nature, this sickness. As time goes on, the magical effect of freeing me and allowing me to be present seems to diminish the end of my drinking was very sad and very pathetic i drank in depression and loneliness it seemed to do something at one time it i love the term in the 12 by 12 it says where alcohol bacchus allowed us to act extemporaneously which means i could come out here and play i could be here right now with you but towards the end of my drinking, it pushed me more inside myself. I was more lonely when I was drunk. And how does that happen when at one time alcohol set me free? At one time it allowed me to be right here. I can remember junior high school when alcohol was so magical. the effect produced by it and i didn't really know it yet i mean i was experiencing it because i hadn't been drinking very long but i go to a dance and i go this and i had i had this uh someone in my neighborhood teach me a couple dance things so i could dance because i didn t know how to dance and I went to this dance with on a mission because there was a girl in my class that i was obsessed with i mean oh my god i i was here so bad it was so bad when i was in a class with her i couldn't even look on the side of the room that she was in because she'd make me crazy i just and i'm gonna ask her to dance i'm going to the dance to on this mission i already know what colleges our kids are are going to go to. I mean, it's like, I build castles in the air and then go on a mission to find someone to decorate them. So I go to this dance and I'm going to ask her to dance. And I have this fantasy about, oh, we're going to fall in love and we'll probably have sex. And it wouldn't be for the first time, but it would be the first time with a person. And I go to the dance and she's, I'm standing up against the wall of the gymnasium and she is out on the floor dancing with one of her girlfriends. And i'm trying to psych myself up to walk through that fear and i can't it's something i'm stuck i am stuck you know i i'm fighting every song every song i just battle within myself okay next song next song the next song comes and i just it's insane finally after i don't know how many songs but after a while i just felt like such a pathetic loser and i just i shuffled out of that dance and out the parking lot i ran into a couple of my buddies who had a fifth of 151 rum i love 151 room i'd get you downtown now that's good i like that stuff because you know how i like that i like stuff like that because instant gratification is not quick enough for me i like And 151 was right now. I go out there and I have some Coca-Cola and make a couple of those plastic cups, get a couple 151 rum and Cokes in me and it changed the world. I floated back into that dance under the power of 151 Rum. I walked right up to that girl. The girl I couldn't hardly even look at. She made me so crazy and I just started talking to her and I'm saying all the right stuff and I don't know where it's coming from it's like I'm channeling someone very cool and very funny and I am making her laugh and she wants to dance with me and we are dancing we ended up seeing each other for a period of time but in the middle of that I was experiencing the power of alcohol and we suddenly realized that alcohol was doing for us what we could not do for ourselves are these extravagant promises they're amazing promises and I what an amazing thing alcohol was when alcohol was what alcohol was and then what a sad and pathetic thing the effect produced by alcohol became in the progression of disease i i don't i've never met an alcoholic yet that if he could have maintained the effect produced by alcohol that he received when he was started to drink he would have never got sober i was um was in a treatment center uh last last treatment center i was in i was in they kept me a long time because i was really sick my detox was twice as long as anybody else in there because I was I mean I'm the kind of drunk I get not all alcoholists get physically addicted to alcohol but I get extremely physically addicted to the point where I can have seizures I just it's bad I drink and I don't eat when I drink for days because I can't I don'T want to I DON'T want TO eat up my drinking money, and I'm living on the street. So you give me a choice, Richard's Wild Irish Rose or McDonald's. McDonald's is going to lose that choice every single time because I need the medicine more than that with a desperation. So I got sores that don't heal. My gums bleed. I shake uncontrollably. They finally got me physically stabilized. And I got a counselor named Judy. And that was in there long enough that I had to sign release papers for Judy to get all my files from all the other treatment centers and some of the therapists I went to. So over the course of about six weeks, seven weeks that I was in there, Judy ended up, and we had sessions a lot, and I probably talked to her every day. Judy knew more about me than I knew about me. And she had the deal. And I get out of there, I got a sponsor and I get out of here and I'm going to a lot of meetings. I'm probably going to two to three meetings a day. I think Sunday I went to four or five usually. And I'm go into all these meetings because you know I feel a lot better when I'm with you than I do when I am with me. So I went through a lot of meetings and about three months in I guess i ran into judy at my what became my first home group and she she was a member of aa she didn't go a lot but she would go because counselors don't do a lot of aa it seemed like but she she went occasionally she comes in my home group and she comes up to me at the meeting and she says to she asked me this question that baffled me she said bob what happened to you i don't know what she means i said what do you mean judy what do you mean she said well every time i'm leaving the the treatment center you seem to be one of the guys bringing the meetings in there i say oh yeah i do that a couple times a week she said i hear you got dick tucson as a sponsor i said i do i call him every day she said I heard that she just became the secretary of a of the rush hour group at the alano club I said you know I did it I'm not supposed to you're supposed to have six months, but they voted me in anyway. She said, I heard you contacted the courts and offered to go do the two years. I said, i did and i don't have to do the 2 years so amazing and i said i hear your contacted your parents and you're trying to make amends and i i got sad when she said that i said yeah i'm doing the actions my sponsor wants me to do but it's not going that well took my parents a long time to warm up to me again, to start to even want to see me. But I was taking the actions. She said, I heard you praying. I was embarrassed. I said, yeah, well, yeah. I'm not sure yet I believe in God but I'm taking the action. And then she says, what happened to you? Because in all the years you were around treatment centers and you were in and out of AA, you never were willing to do all that stuff. and she said, she posed that question, and it rocked me because I thought, my God, what happened to me? Because I functioned under a delusion that a lot of us, you know, that if you've been around AA and you're not quite ready yet, and you tell yourself, you now, one of these days, I'm going to come back into AA, and I'm really going to do it. And it'll probably have to happen after I hit such a horrific bottom that the pain of it and the shame and the guilt is going to catapult me into the middle of alcoholic silence. That was my delusion. When the truth was, my last drunk was not my worst bite by any means. I had some that were just nightmares. But it was the one. And I don't know what had happened to me. I couldn't answer Judy's question. And then people, when you come off the streets, people in a if they if they suspect you're serious my god the help just pours in people in aa gave me rides to meetings they would give me cigarettes they take me to a noon meeting at a restaurant and sometimes people guys would buy me lunch because i don't have any money and they were very very kind to me their kindness that i'm still trying to repay and one guy gave me a couple guys were giving me clothes because I didn't have enough the clothes out of the leftover bag from the treatment center one of my earlier outfits was checked pants, checked shirt the checks didn't match I didn' t know that's a fashion statement in L.A. later laughter and a guy gave me not only a whole bunch of really nice clothes but he gave me a box of books, not recovery books, not spiritual books. These are like mystery, science fiction, that kind of stuff. And I'm reading after this interaction with Judy, I'm read one of those books. And there's a part of this book, it's not the main, it's on the storyline. It's a little offshoot of the storyline where they're the scientists are doing experiments on the human brain and they discovered that in the human brain there's a part that allows you to get high it had a latin name but they called it the pleasure center of the brain and it's where you it allows youto get high from alcohol and drugs so what they did is to study this they got these laboratory rats and they put two tiny wire filaments into the pleasure center ofthe rat's brain and then they pass a mild electric stimulus through those wires and that rat would get really loaded. Matter of fact, it just never experienced anything that felt that good. So they hooked up the juice to a pedal in the rat's cage and right away the rat would learn he could hit that pedal and get high. So the rat just lays on the pedal. He don't stop to eat. He doesn't stop. He stops to drink water, to sleep. You can parade lady rats in front of him. He said, not now, baby. I'm too busy partying. You know, he'd be hitting that pedal and he hit the pedal until he died. Well, that shocked the scientists because they're not in the business of killing rats. And he'd usually die from a combination of dehydration and exhaustion. His heart would seize up. So what they did is they put these monitors on the rats that would allow them to know when the rat was getting in a danger zone so they could turn the juice off so some one of those poor rats is partying like hell hitting that hitting that pedal hitting that pedal and all of a sudden they get in the danger zone scientists shut the turn that juice off now that poor rat hits that pedal nothing happens and again and again and again until he finally realizes something he doesn't want to know that once and for all, this party's over. And instead of being able to go back to being a rat, he would curl up in a ball and lay on the floor of the cage to die because without the juice, what the hell's the point of any of it? I read that and I started choking up, man. I started, because I thought, oh my God, that's what happens to me. I didn't get thrown into Alcoholics Anonymous with a willingness and a desperation because of the consequences of my drinking, and the consequences were severe. If I could have still got high, if I could've made that juice still work, I'd have never got sober. I remember the moments, many of them in the last year I drank were just the desolation of chasing something you can't catch, chasing the ghosts of the party's past. and I don't know it was that that broke me not the consequences and I I'll tell you what I believe from my experience is that Alcoholics Anonymous is not designed to get you to quit drinking want to quit drinkin? punch a cop you'll quit for a while AlcoholicsAnonymous is designed to do one thing and I think one thing only and that's to turn the juice back on. It's to slowly duplicate a feeling of freedom and rightness that I'd once found in the bottle. But AA has good news and bad news. The good news is it works like that. The good new is that everything that's wrong with you that drives you to do self-destructive things and drink again, Alcoholics Anonymous has a treatment for that. That's the good news. The bad news is that our process doesn't work as fast as five shots of tequila. But if you're lucky, as I was, I had nowhere to go. One of my favorite lines in the book describes me. And it's talking about before you ever come to believe in anything. I don't believe in God. I don' t believe in AA. I don''t even, not sure I even trust my sponsor. I don ''t believe in nothing. But it says you'll come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of your life, Bob, as you have been living it. My God, I believe that. If you've been trying to control and enjoy your drinking and failing every single time and you've beentrying to control and enjoy your abstinence and your failing every single time. That you ain't right drunk and you ain'T right sober. You know what hopelessness and futility feels like. And then it says at that point, there's, it says, at that if you come to believe that, it says then there's nothing left. I think one of the great things that happens to guys like me is I run out of game. You know, I run outta plans. My little plans and designs. I love that. It makes me sound so childish and petty in the book when it says, our little plans and designs, you know, jeez, I don't have little, I have big deals. My little plans and design. So there's nothing left. You've exhausted it all. There's no more game. There's not more hope of getting her back. There's now more getting a good job. You've had good jobs and that didn't do it either. There's no more new medication because you tried it all. There's not more new therapeutic movement because you've done it all there's nothing left no human power, nothing left except to pick up this simple kit of spiritual tools of spiritual actions that the people in AA from 1971 to 1978 were putting in front of me laying at my feet and I'm jumping over it because I'm smarter than you and I know what I need. Hey, this is me. I know what I need and I'm dying and I am dying and I am getting worse and worse and in 1978 I tried to kill myself. How many people in here have either attempted suicide or at least for God's sakes wanted to and felt like it? how many people did it sober? Well, that makes that line in chapter 11 come true. Bob, you're not happy about your sobriety, are you? Well, actually, I'm grateful and happy, but I'm going to kill myself. That's right. And so what we have here, in my experience, What I found here is I found a treatment that works intermittently for the thing that drove the engine, the thing that drove the train. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a self-help program for me. It's a life and death program for me. I love AA. I love AA not only for what it's done within me. It's done the unimaginable in me. And what is that? That I could actually be sober and it wouldn't feel like I'm doing time. That I can actually be so sober and feel long moments of freedom. that I could be sober and like me in my imperfections and just be glad I'm me. And the Bob I've come to know over the decades is not a Bob I have to kill. It's a Bob, I kind of like in the imperfections with all the defects. Alcoholics Anonymous has been very, very good to me. But I believe that I have to guard my sobriety and guard my program recovery because my head can move me out of here easily. If I let it take charge again, it will move me Out of My Own Recovery. And it'll do it by shiny objects, whether it's a girl or a car or a job or big money or a house. and I want to read I think I'm going to close with this or maybe, maybe I will I don't know I don' t know what I'm doing yeah people ask me sometimes, what are you going to talk about God, I wish I knew most of the time I can't wait to hear what I am going to say because I don''t know I mean I know people in AA that write it out and have little cards, and they just refer notes on a book. I've only picked up the book and read out of it maybe twice. But one of the most beautiful and dead-on things Bill Wilson ever wrote was in the original 12th tradition. It's really very poignant to me and very touching and very true. He says, and this is after reading the long form, which is very long. And he goes, first time I ever heard somebody read the long form, I thought they were personally interjecting the first two words in the 12th tradition. It's actually in the12th tradition, and the first 2 words is, and finally. Because they're long, right? And finally, we have Alcoholics Anonymous is believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities, that we're actually to practice a genuine humility, this to the end, that our great blessings may never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all. There is so much in that tradition. This principle of anonymity is that I go from being a big shot to just one of the herd, just a servant here, just oneoftheguys. A friend of mine says, another bozo on the bus. It's only my ego that tries to distinguish me and rise me above everybody else. But my soul, my soul yearns for unity. It yearns to love. My ego clamors to be loved. But my soul yearns to love and you know how you know that? Because love doesn't receiving love is never quite enough. You know, I you can't people if love could have changed me my parents would have changed me I had girlfriends that sacrificed for me above and beyond what you could understand why would they do all that because they loved me but I'm the black hole of love you can't love me enough but when you guys tricked me into helping others and sponsoring guys as I started to care about you and started to love you the deficiencies the inadequacies the vacancies inside of me that i always imagined would be filled if i had the right people loving me the right way if i had the material stuff if i i thought i could fill those holes from from acquisition and the more it's it's like trying to fill the inside vacancies with outside stuff it's just it doesn't work it not only doesn't work it seems to make the thirst and the hole bigger it stretches it out makes it more empty and yet I've had moments and I to this day I have them I it's what it's really what I live for In Alcoholics Anonymous, those moments where you're talking with some guy and you're trying to help him. And you don't know if you can help him or not. It doesn't matter. But you care about him. How he's doing right now in his life and his sobriety is more important than you. And those are the moments where I feel the way I always imagined I'd feel if I had everything I wanted. So it comes from giving, not from receiving. And this principle of anonymity, of joining the herd, of being one with, to being small enough to fit in here. You know, there's no... According to the 11th tradition, we never promote ourself. We don't distinguish ourselves. We just fit in. And then this other principle of principles before personalities. I'm embarrassed to tell you, I'm not quick sometimes with stuff or I'm very selfish and I turn stuff and make it all about me. So I thought for years, probably 20 years in Alcoholics Anonymous and I did traditional workshops with general service, all that stuff and I thought what they meant with principles before personalities that I was supposed to practice some principles that AA presents, You know, like acceptance and forgiveness and tolerance and all those things. And I'm supposed to put those before your annoying and somewhat difficult personalities. And I've got to tell you what I've learned, and this is so true for me. There's only one personality that I have to put these principles before, and that's mine. Because I am the seat, the source, and the center of my conflict my opinions, and my judgments. I don't need to practice these principles to tolerate you. I need to practise these principles to tolerate me. Because when I don' t tolerate you I pay a price in here. I end up feeling about myself the way I'd feel about an opinionated judgmental guy. Because it's unescapable. There's a lot of things there's a lof of things in my life If I don't do, it's not that self-gratification wouldn't want me to do them. I just don't doing because I get it. I'm awake. I know what the price is. You know, one of the things that hurts so many of us is we're delusional. We think we can get away with stuff and not pay a price. The price is always present. It's all it's always there. And we do this so that our great blessings will never spoil us. Do you know, if you see people, I got three guys right now. I love these guys and I've sponsored them for over a decade and they're all making several million dollars a year and they all got like movie star girlfriends and wives and my one guy just bought a several million dollar house I mean they got everything you'd ever want and as their material world grew their spiritual world shrank and they don't even know they're doing it because when you think about it what would seduce a guy like me away from the thing that's changed my life It's the fruits and what I reap in my own recovery. You know, when you think about it, I go to detoxes. People in detox, oh my God, they got a horrible case of alcoholism. Ten years later with a million dollars in the bank, they're kind of alcoholic. I mean, sort of, you know. I mean yeah, don't admit, oh yeah, I'm alcoholic. How come you haven't been to a meeting in a while? Well, I'm busy. I'm seduced by the things that feed the ego and the things that feed this self. And Wilson, he's brilliant when he says we are actually to practice a genuine humility this to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation to him who resides over us all. to know that my life is good, and it's not my fault. Humility is something that's... Do you know that the word humility and the word humor come from the same root word, humus meaning earth? And most of the people I know that I think are humble, not perfect, but they have some innate humility is because they had this ability to laugh at themselves. I liked Wilson's description of humility. He said, it's an honest reckoning of who and what I am coupled with a sincere desire to grow towards God's vision of who he wants me to be. And when you're like that, you get the joke. And the joke is us. When you can start laughing at yourself, you'll never be without entertainment i'm telling you thanks for listening we hope you enjoyed this recording if you are interested in other speaker tapes or cds from AA or Al-Anon, please contact us at Sound Solutions, toll free 1-877-893-2777 or visit us on the web at soundsolutionsrecording.com. We are also available to cover your recording and sound system needs. Thank you for allowing us to be of service and carrying the message.