The 12 Traditions – Workshop – 2023 – Part 4 of 6 – Bob D.

You may have a future in comedy. I don't know. I'm Bob Darrowman, alcoholic. Any Jehovah Witnesses here? No Jehovah witnesses? None? There's usually one or two. I had an old friend who was a Jehovah witness. Many years ago he married an atheist and his kids grew up to knock on people's doors for no apparent reason. So, you know, you guys have pretty much every year it seems like you guys do this retreat and you talk a lot about the book and a lot of people talk about it. A lot about The Steps, which is beautiful. so i thought maybe to be useful i'm gonna i'm going to talk a little bit about my experience with the steps but i'ma lean a little more into the traditions um you know in night in the 1940s alcoholics anonymous was uh was in trouble he's dying there were conflicts people were getting drunk uh they were war like to even to this day some to some degree the cleveland people with clarence sider knows guys just really didn't like the new york people bill wilson and you know there's all that crap going on and a lot of disunity and uh wilson had read an art he read an article that he about some an organization he didn't know about called the washingtonians and how the Washingtonians in just a few years went from six guys to some of the estimates were in the hundreds of thousands without telephones, with everything we got. And then they just died. They just died, and they don't exist. And so Wilson could be very inspired. He was, everyone I've ever, I'd never, he, the first year I went to Alcoholics Anonymous was the year he died. And I never got a chance to meet him. But everybody I knew, and I've known a lot of people that knew him, they all said the same thing, that he was a visionary. That he had an ability to see things that other people can't see. And there was a guy who did an article about Einstein. And he said in that article, there were, that every generation or so, somebody comes into the planet that has an ability to make leaps over things and see things that logic won't tell you about. And I think that's true for Wilson. How does a guy three years sober write chapter five, right? How does this self-centered guy see that self-centeredness is the root of the problem. How does that happen? Does any of you, when you were three years sober without a sponsor, without the book, just all of a sudden go, you know, selfishness and self-centeredness I think really is the root of my troubles. You don't see that. Self hides from self. And so Wilson was inspired, and he wrote this in what was now known as the long form of the 12 traditions. It was, at that time, it was the only form. It was the tenets to ensure AA's future. And he went around Alcoholics Anonymous for a while trying to get groups to adopt these traditions. You know, he couldn't even get groups to read them. He couldn't ever get people to read them. And I get it. My old home group, we used to read the long form of the traditions once a month. And oh my god they're long they're really long i mean you and new people who have a short of the attention span of a gnat would sit there just like in pain just like oh make it stop you know just because it goes on and on and one and uh wilson couldn't get any traction and there was a guy in chicago earl treat who he's the guy that that uh it was that came to akron And Dr. Bob took him through the steps in one weekend, which wasn't the normal course of events, even though there's people that try to take his example and make it the normal. But Earl had to get back to Chicago. So Earl is watching this conflict and Bob's frustration because we need to have something here to ensure that we're not going to die. and uh so earl treat wrote the short form of the traditions and they were more easily adopted and in the 50s in 1950 they were ratified and they Were published in the grapevine um and they become what is known as our 12 traditions but i i started looking at the long form. I'm a guy who really has a tremendous amount of respect for Bill Wilson. Bill Wilson did something that was never done before. In the history of the planet, outside of five or six years in the 1800s for the Washingtonians, there's never been an effective treatment for alcoholism, and Alcoholics Anonymous has changed the lives of the estimates since its beginning. It's probably over 4 million people. There's never been anything like that. I have a book at home called The Slaying of the Dragon, and it's an account of treatments for alcohol that have failed, and they've all failed prior to AlcoholicsAnonymous. I mean, they used to do some crazy stuff to people like us. Drill holes in our skulls to let the demons out. Burn us at the stake because you've sworn five times tearfully you'd never do that again and you're doing it again. You must be possessed. And if you ever go to Bermuda in the square, they have a thing for men, drunken men, and they have something for drunken women. The drunken woman is called a dunking chair they strap you in this chair it's on a long lever and it goes down and it pushes you under the ocean holds you there and then brings you up and they do that to keep thinking that's going to terrify it's going freak you out to the point you'll never drink again well you know what that's like that doesn't work they put guys in a stock thing where your head would be in there and they'd lock it in your arms are in there And then they didn't have indoor plumbing. So people had what they call peapots next to their bed and people would come out in the morning and throw trash on you and empty your their peapods in your face, thinking that that surely that they'll never going to drink again after that. and I don't know I don' t think that worked matter of fact I suspect there might have been some pretty weird alcoholics that came to like that I don''t know I don ''t know I was over in Russia been over there a couple times it doesn''t look like I'm going to go again because the political environments change But there's a lot of drunks over there. They've had one of the worst problems with alcoholism, maybe of any country in the world. It's the kind of place that on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, it's not unusual to see somebody chugging a liter of vodka at 7am or seeing somebody passed out on the sidewalk in the morning. And the Soviet Union had spent millions and millions of rubles trying to figure out a way to curtail this problem that was affecting the culture and affecting the productivity. And one time when I was over there, I was doing a workshop with two Russian translators. uh one was a member of aa and another the other one was a member valedon and because nobody speaks english rare it's rare to have anybody over there that learns english now a little bit more today because as russia's back in the the last decade started entering into the world economy somewhat people were starting to learn english but for the most part this was many years ago there was nobody there that spoke english and so we had these translators. And during one of the breaks, a guy comes up to me and he's excited talking in Russian. I don't understand Russian. He doesn't understand English. So we had to grab one of the translators and grab the Al-Anon. She was handy. And we grabbed this woman, Al-Alanon translator, and she's translating what he's saying. And what he is saying is that he was a terrible, terrible drunk. Figured he's here, he must be. He had tried everything to not drink and it never, nothing worked. And it was so bad that the Soviets had created a chip that their doctors had created and they would surgically implant this chip into the muscle tissue in the middle of your back. And if you drank, it detected the alcohol in your bloodstream and released a toxin into your bloodstream. I don't know what it was, but from the description, it sounded like it was some kind of super antabuse. It wasn't designed to kill you. I mean, if you were bad shape anyway, it could have pushed you over the edge, but it was designed to make you wish you were dead for a while. You know, like just miserable, miserable stuff. And it was a fairly effective deterrent from drinking, as Antabuse was used in this country. But I know alcoholics in AA that drank on Antabase. I know many of them that have done that. So, but this guy, as he's telling me the story about this chip, he pulls his shirt tail up, turns around, and he's got this ugly scar in the middle of his back. And through the Al-Anon translator, he's telling us that after a little over a year of no relief, after a little over year of, you know what we go through, restless, irritable, discontent, low-level depression, loneliness. After over a year, he begged his best friend to take a kitchen knife and cut the chip out of him so he could go get drunk. Now, the Al-Anon translator was horrified by that story i on the other hand was horrified that he waited a year right because i because of i'm a member of alcoholics anonymous because of wilson's original intention for membership in the third tradition of the long form is so much different than the third tradition in the short form and the shortform we all know it it's read at most meetings The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. That's not an issue in my life. I don't even, you know, if you ask me at any time in my sobriety over the last 44 and a half years, do you have a desire not to drink? I'd probably go, well, yeah, of course, you now. But it's not really an issue. It's not even an issue with me. But Wilson said in the original, he said that membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism. I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of that. Because when I stop drinking, I begin to suffer from alcoolism. I mean, why the hell do you think a guy like me would relapse for over a half dozen years? swear to himself with complete understanding that this is the worst thing I could ever do? What kind of insanity and suffering would have to be on me to push me back to drinking again when I know that it's the worst things I could every do? When I'm on paper and one missed PO appointment, one bad UA, and I'm going to prison for two years. What would have happened to a guy? How much suffering would it take for me to go and think that's a good idea because I need the medicine? Just like how much suffering did it take that Russian guy to beg his friend to cut that chip out of his back? So I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of the membership requirement originally put down by Wilson. And what is it? And I think that is the question. And I've had to look at this honestly as I possibly can over the years of what is suffering from alcoholism. And I sponsor a lot of guys and I talk to them about it. And I hear, it's funny how you will introduce me to me. As you start to tell me about your stuff, there are times when that happens and I'm listening to you. And I'll sit there and I'll go, oh my God, that's me. I never heard it put that way, but that's me. You introduced me to me through your sharing about you in a way that some of the greatest psychiatrists and psychologists on the planet couldn't do because an alcoholic properly armed with information about himself can reach another alcoholic where no one else can, and you did. You reached me. You introduced my to me. um you introduced me to a way of life that counteracts me pretty much and so one of the things that happened to me when i got sober i'm suffering from alcoholism so the suffering drove me to get a sponsor because i was out of options i mean i just I don't know what else to do. I need help. Just for a guy like me to admit to himself the desperation and how much I need, help is a big deal because I'm self-reliant. I'm that guy that doesn't want to look I need health, but I got to look like I don' t. It's a hard thing to do when you have that ego. I remember one time in probably 8th grade, I think junior high school and there was a guy named i think his name was scott maybe and he was he was a senior and him and i got in a little discussion and the argument and he wants me to uh admit that i'm wrong and i'm not gonna do that and this guy he's beat me half to death and i wouldn't give up i would rather take the this horrible beating than look weak that's crazy that is insane it would take a person with an extreme ego to be like that that you would put yourself at risk the guys eventually stopped hitting me He kept saying to me things like, don't get up. And I just, don' t get up, just slammed me a couple more times. He was about 40 pounds heavier than I was and about six inches taller. I mean, I didn't have a chance, just like I didn' t have a change with alcohol and alcoholism. And so I get this sponsor because I'm broken. I get the sponsor because i'm crushed. I get to sponsor because basically I'm out of options. I know I didn't know much, but I knew one thing that with everything in me, I can't stay away from the first drink. I can for a little while, but eventually my emotions, the depression, the anxiety, the loneliness, the not fitting all that stuff just eventually eats my lunch. And I just can't, I can't stay sober. So I get this sponsor and I make a deal with him. I'll do whatever he wants me to do. And one of the first things he asked me to go do was to pray. and I you know sometimes when people in AA now I have committed to do whatever he asked me to do but I still reserve the right to have discussions with him to try to show him the error of the direction he's giving me you know right so he wants me to pray and I said to him I said I can't pray he said why not well I said well I don't believe in God he said I didn't ask you to believe in God, I ask you to pray. So I said, well, listen, if I pray and I don't believe in God, it'd be a hypocrite. He said, oh, you've been a hypocrate all your life. Just do it. And I was, it was true. I'm the guy that would promise you anything and then do what I want to do because that's what selfish, self-centered people do. We were driven by our emotions and our needs, I had no integrity because I was a hypocrite. And so I started praying. And it's funny that there's a line in the agnostics. It's very touching to me. And it says that God does not make hard terms with those who seek him. I used to MF God. I don't even believe in him, but I cuss him out anyway. You know, just because I've had my life so crappy, I would fight with religious people. I'd like to... You know what? One of my best days drinking was towards the end. I was at the same as this guy's apartment and I had a half gallon of vodka that was about half done and two watchtower people came to the door. now this is like being invited to a great sport sporting event right and i brought him in i just i just just tried to frustrate them and make i just oh because i don't i don'T like religious people i'm an anti-religionist i'm a wannabe atheist i'm not really an atheist i've if you've ever known any atheists to be a good atheist you got to be very religious about your atheism to be a good atheist. What I am truly is a guy who's afraid of God. I'm a guy who deep, I couldn't even admit this to myself, but the truth is deep down inside of me, if there is a God, I'm just not good enough for him. I've too stained. I, I, too, I've too wrong. I have hurt too many people. I I've gone too far. And by nature, I'm the kind of guy that if I think you don't like me, I'm going to not like you first. I've done that all my life. Did you ever just go on – be on a job somewhere? Just some guy's having a – he might be having a bad day, but you don'T think so. You think he doesn't like you. And you start building a case against him, right? The next thing you know, you're having an argument and the guy doesn't know where this is coming from. But I'm that guy. So I did that with God because of my internal feelings of unworthiness. I put it on him just as I would put it on you if I suspect you don't like me somehow, or even if I did something to hurt you, I'm going to make it your fault. I'm gonna make it your fault so I'm that way with God and I'm really truly I'm just afraid. And my sponsor had me praying, which felt weird to me. But from the moment I started doing that, as I started taking actions that are contrary to what Bob wants and contrary to how Bob feels, from the minute I started making those decisions, from the second I started talking about those actions, an endless series of coincidences started happening in my life. weird stuff, weird stuff. And a lot of it happened around Alcoholics Anonymous or in AlcoholicsAnonymous meetings. I had this happen to me dozens of times, you know, because in early sobriety, I go, I'm on that emotional roller coaster or I get, I can get crazy for no reason. I don't even know why I'm crazy. I get depressed. Nobody's even said nothing to me. And I just start sinking into the abyss. I get weird easily. And I'm, I'd be weird when I go to an AA meeting. I don't know what the hell's going on. I don'T know what, not only DON'T I know what THE answer is, I DON'T even know what the problem is. And there'd be a stranger in the meeting who starts sharing and he's nailing me because he's talking about what I'm going through exactly and how he got out of it that didn't happen to me once or twice, that happened to me dozens of times until even the skeptic even the atheist inclined person that I was started to come to believe because of an actual experience and I'll tell you I'm incapable of believing something because it says it in a book or because the minister said it. I mean, I might placate you and act like I believe, but the truth is I don't. I'm a skeptic, I'm an atheist, I'm not a cynic, and I'm so full of self-centered fear. I'm incapable of just believing just for the sake of it. But I started to have an experience that was undeniable. And I think that's perfect because it becomes my experience and it becomes part of my reality. Your reality and your belief doesn't touch my reality and you know, it doesn't matter how intellectually, you know I've known, I've sponsored clergy over the years that some of them very learned people when it comes to theology and religion heads full of information about God more than I will ever have. And yet some of those guys drank themselves to death because Father Martin said it best. He said, when intellect and emotion are in conflict with each other, the emotion always wins because it's persistent. It's like when I found out my wife was sleeping with one of my best friends who I sponsored, and I lost my wife and daughter in one fell swoop to him. They moved in together. Where the hell's God now? Right? And people in AA would... I mean, I almost punched a guy because he came up to me. I was in the middle of that crap. He came up and he said, well, do you believe in God? And I said, yeah, I do. He said that it shouldn't be a problem. Oh, man, I wanted to hit him. And it's not what you believe, it's what you do. What saved me is I did a lot of 12-step work. I started going from two H&I meetings a week up to five and six. I started throwing myself, just like it says in the book, throw yourself the harder into helping others. Quiet said imperious urge. And I did that, and it saved me. The actions of Alcoholics Anonymous saved me, That AA is often referred to as a faith-based program. I don't think that's true. I understand how it's observed like that, but I think in truth and experience, it's really an action-based programme. There's something... Okay, I'm taking these crazy actions. God's talking to me in the meetings through people, and it's happening, and I'm coming to believe. But there's a big difference between belief in God and trusting God, a world of difference. And the one is action and the other one is thought. And I need the action. And trust, I didn't understand that trust isn't a feeling. I always think when you're self-centered and you're focused on how you feel obsessively over the years, everything becomes a feeling of gratitude need to have gratitude well as soon as i feel that way you know what they're telling me get up off your lazy selfish ass and go down to the detox get on the 12-step list to demonstrate gratitude and the same is true with trust what what do you do bob when when you're scared what do You do when she uh when she said she might be pregnant. And you can't even support yourself. What do you do when you're afraid that this stuff from your past is going to catch up with you and you might go to prison? What do You do when You've just lost another job, and it's the ninth, it's the eighth job You've lost in just the first couple years of Your sobriety? What doYou do whenYou're terrified? What doYou do when When You're told that Your dad's dying and you haven't completely made all your amends. What do you do when your girlfriend goes off with another guy because he had more going on than you do? He made more money, he had a better place, he had an nicer car, and you can't really fault her, you fault yourself because you know the truth, you know that you're not alone. You know the true truth, I'm not enough. I'm not enough what do you do then and it's what you do if you're like me is you do what your sponsor tells you you show up you throw yourself into helping others if there's amends to make you make them if there are things to it's just a whole process as Chamberlain would say of getting rid of the things that are between me and you and me and God so and i started to realize the the validity of our second tradition and what it's really saying here that it's not just in the group conscience when you're trying to make a decision for your home group you know that god will express himself through that group conscience and he does the ultimate authority shows up but i think that when two or more of us come together for the purpose or recovery, there's something in the midst there that's greater than the sum of the parts. In a strong meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where the people there for the most part are there to try to help drunks and it's not a narcissistic A meeting. And there's some narcissistic A meetings. You know the ones that start out does anybody have a problem? Some poor guy will dump his problem on the table and then everybody shares at him because know they're because all they've all become marriage counselors and they share at him for the rest of the hour and the guy can't even sit through the meeting he's just being overwhelmed with advice he bolts out of the meeting halfway through the meeting which doesn't stop us because i didn't get to share my advice so i started to see that uh in a strong meeting And you can tell, you can feel if you're awake at all. You can feel that spirit in a good AA meeting. You can feeling it. And the difference, how do you know a meeting has a good spirit versus one that doesn't? It's what happens to me as a result of that meeting. I've been to meetings, honest to God, and it's not the fault of the meeting. Maybe it's me. But I've been to meetings where on the meetings over here, I think to myself, my God, I need a meeting. Just, you know, like I feel almost worse and part of the problem is me in conflict with the people in the room and partof the meeting is I've come there to try to reconnect with something that maybe I've drifted from and all I'm doing, reconnecting with is Bob, is me. so God expresses himself in Alcoholics Anonymous he shows up here and so when I started to wake up to that I started having a respect and honoring through my actions AlcoholicsAnonymous you come to the groups I go to my home group I don't touch my phone why don't i touch my phone well because i'm sober a long time and if i if i'm texting or on my phone during a meeting i might as well just hold up a sign to the new people i think it's all right for everyone to do this though i want that kind of alcohol it's synonymous but selfishness precludes that. Selfishness just makes it, what I'm doing is fine. It's funny. I'm the kind of guy that likes the law for other people. I think the 50, I remember when they did the 55 mile an hour speed limit, I thought, man, that's a good idea. I bet you there's less traffic accidents. I bet you it's better. It'd probably be better for the economy, less fuel burns. Good. It'S good all the way around, but I'm in a hurry. Handicapped parking, same thing, same thing, you know, it's good, need that, we need that. Traditions, traditions are good for you. When I was in, I spent nine years in, this is pathetic, spent nine years in general service and i didn't even know it i weaponized the 12 traditions i'd weaponize the steps too uh and i my ego has there's no end to its hypocrisy there's no end how it can selfishly use things i remember oh caddy you know i was one of the first guys i was the first guy in vegas and one of of the earlier guys in the country in the early 80s start doing big book weekends and you know that kind of stuff and I how it went to my ego you know how I started thinking myself as of myself is the is the guy I'm the guy and I remember going to a meeting at one of the clubs there was a guy chairing the meeting who I knew he was actually sober a little longer than I was. He was a pretty good AA member. And the subject is step four. And I'm sitting there listening. And they all got it wrong. Everybody in the room got it wrong. And and I'm the only one that knows. And but I it's okay. I'm listening patiently, just smiling patiently, listening to the nonsense. But I know the guy chair of the meeting is going to call on me at the end so I can clean this crap up. Right? And he didn't call on Me at the End. Now I'm mad. It's hard to be mad and look humble at the same time. It really is a hat trick. I tell you, it's very difficult. But I'm mad. And I, he comes, I say to him at the end of the meeting, he asked me, what'd you think of the meeting? How's that crappy meeting? He said, no, I thought it was a good meeting. It was terrible. Nobody you called on even, I don't even think they ever did a four step. He said no, some of those guys, they've done four steps. I said, you don't know. I don' think you've done a four-step. He says, what do you mean? I've done a couple of them. I say, oh yeah? So what's it say on the bottom of page 66 and the top of 67, huh? And he looks at me like I didn't come here to be tested. And what is that except ego? I've weaponized the spiritual principles that are designed to create unity, that are designed to created usefulness, that are designed to reduce Bob's ego and I've taken them and I have used them to bolster my ego into this feeling of a pathetic smug superiority and so you know what happens guys like me we go back through the steps and that the fourth step especially in conjunction with six seven eight nine the fourth step is designed to get rid of the things in me that are causing these problems and one of the things that the big game changer for me in the fourth step was and i learned this by helping a guy do it after you there's in the resentment section there's they ask you to do six things now i know i once traveled with joe and charlie for a couple years they only they would only talk about a couple of them. They sloughed over what to me has become experientially the greatest part of the fourth step. So you list your judgments. They call it resentments, but you know what it is. It's the people you have built cases on. It's your opinions. You're putting it all out there because in order to have ego reduction, you have to bring the ego out into the light of day. And one of the best ways to do that is to make a list of all its judgments, how it's played God with people, how it's created that separation. So I have all the people that I've judged harshly, the people that I'm going to judge harshly. That I've had cases billed against. The second column, why? And it's little bullet points which hardly seems enough if you're like me. I think these should be pages of explanation so that when you read it to your sponsor he goes, they did that? I'm going to get the boys together, and we'll go over there. You know, I want you to hate who I hate the way I hate who I hate, right? So it says bullet points, just little bullets, just little, and it makes you when you do the bullet points there's a little, sometimes there's times when you just put it on paper and you're like, that's pathetic. That's, I hate you and wished you were dead because you had a party and didn't invite me. Then what aspects of self were hurt, threatened, injured, interfered with or affected? My pocketbook, my pride, my personal relationships, my ambitions, me getting my way. And then a lot of people at that point go right to the last column try to look for their part well first of all that's fine if you want to look at it i said that for years i said we look for our part but i i've caught myself in a situation where the guy is sponsored and then i was and i told him okay we're going to look for our heart in the middle of page 67 is a paragraph and uh where we you know we ask ourselves those questions, where was I selfish, etc. And he found his part. But in looking for his part in that mindset, unconsciously, he reserved the right to feel that they had a part. So when he wanted to make amends to them, he got pissed. Because after he humbled himself so much and admitting where he was wrong, they didn't respond. And the book starts out that last paragraph with something that you can't do unless you do the thing in between. It says, we're putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done. We resolutely look for our own mistakes. So this is, you've got to forget about what your parents did. What kind of a son were you? You've gotto forget what she did. What kind of a boyfriend or a husband were you? And it goes on to say in the same paragraph, disregard the other person entirely. And how do you do that if you're one of those guys like I am and don't even know I'm like this where I just, I will stare at what you did to the point where I blow it up to the part where it keeps what I did in the shadows because I'll make what you did in my mind worse. I am an expert at hiding selfish, self-seeking, vengeful, all kinds of sick behavior in the shadow of what I can find wrong with you. Did it in relationships. I did it in jobs. I had a boss one time. He used to take merchandise home. Now, the owner didn't know he did it and he wasn't supposed to do it, But it gave me license to steal. You know what I mean? It was like I could justify. And I had a great mentor in early sobriety say to me, he said, listen, kid, I want you to know if you're explaining something, if you'RE justifying something, rationalizing something or defending something, kid, you got to know you're wrong because you never have to negotiate what's right. You just don't. And the minute this negotiating voice comes on in my head, you can bet your ass that I'm out of line and I have to justify it because it's self-serving. And so the book says, what do you do? It says, okay, you can't wish these. We must look at them from an entirely different angle, these judgments in the resentment list. and then it says something very interesting it says we must be free of these or it's going to kill us and now that you know that you don't have what it takes to do it you can't wish these resentments away any more than alcohol so what do you do and it says the next couple words this was our course and in the next two lines it tells me something that will change my life if i can do it now doing it is not that easy and it's a two-part realization if you if you go back to when it first starts to talk about step one in chapter three it talks about a place that this all this stuff must happen. Chuck Chablis said all the time, this is an inside job. This is not something that is placated or understood academically in the mind. It's something that is taken into the heart. And it says we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost self that we were alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery. And so this is back to that innermOST self. When it says realize, that's not can you kind of see? It's like in here. Do you get it? Do you connect the dots? Do you know what's going on? Do you understand? And they're asking me a two-part realization. The first part's easy. I think everybody in this room could do the first part. Matter of fact, might even like doing it. It says we had to realize that the person who harmed us was perhaps spiritually sick. Yes, they are. And they are stupid too. You know, where's Dr. Kevorkian now that we need him? Let's put him out of their misery. They're sick. Now the ego loves anything that's me here and you there. Loves it. I'm on board for all that. If that's all it said, I wouldn't have gotten any better. I would have just reinforced all my judgments because the alcoholic egos need to be right is unbelievable. We really are what Wilson says an extreme example of what self wants and wants to be right. Extreme. I bet you there's people in this room that have destroyed their life to be right, destroyed marriages and relationships because their need to be right was more important than the relationship. Jobs, because the need to be right. And so the second part of the realization, it says, even though I don't like their symptoms and I don t, and what are the symptoms? The second column, the bullet points, the causes. You mean to tell me, you mean to imply that this person wouldn t have done what I put them on the list for if they hadn t been spiritually sick? Well, let s turn it around. look at all the things that were on your eight-step list. Look at all of the people you hurt. Did you mean to? Maybe not. Did you? Yeah. And why did you do it? Because I was sick in here. I was full of self-centered fear, frustration. Maybe I'd recently been hurt because hurt people will hurt people. But it's because I'm spiritually sick. So even though I don't like their symptoms and the way these symptoms disturb me, column number three, my pride, my pocketbook, my ambitions. Can I get it? The next thing it says is the game changer. It says, had to realize that these people were like me, spiritually sick. So this is not what the ego first envisions, that you're going to see how sick they are and you're gonna feel superior. it's one sick guy who's made a lot of mistakes, who's hurt a lot of people. Looking right across the table at another guy that's made the same mistakes and been driven by the same fears and hurt. This is the restoration of community and unity. This is ego reduction in depth that you go through every judgment of your life and you get to see how wrong you were. And that's what, coming out, I did earlier, I did three, I've done three, four steps before my first good one. And the earlier ones, if you ask me, so what's the nature of your wrongs, Bob? I'd say, well, I stabbed a guy and I ripped off that guy. I had sex with a transvestite. All the things that I felt ashamed of and guilty about, what I did to my mother and father. Ask me after I did the one in the book and I would tell you how wrong I was about my mother and father how I pathetically tried to blink because they wouldn't help me anymore and I made my life their fault about how the girls that I broke up or ruined relationships with and they dumped me how I made it their fault and they're just a bitch I started to rise out of the ashes of my life was the true picture that I'm the guy I'm the guy that did all that stuff did I mean to do it? No. Did I do it yeah, I'm the guy and when I started to see these things from an entirely different angle, when I stopped being the prosecuting attorney and started looking at these situations through the other people's eyes, it was a tremendous awakening to me how wrong I'd been about everything. How wrong I was about my mother and father, my sister, the bosses, the girlfriends, the cops. I mean, I had a big case, big resentment towards these cops that beat the crap out of me. When I put myself in their shoes, they were actually pretty gentle with me because if it would have been me, oh, I'd have been dead. And my mother and father, I had built this case about how they didn't love me. The truth is when I put myself in their shoes, what I didn't understand is why they loved me and continued to help me all those years after disappointment, after disappointment. Because if I was them, I'll tell you, I'm more selfish. I wouldn't have put up with what they put up with. The girls that had dumped me, if I put myself in their place, I wouldn't have survived. I couldn't have stayed in a relationship. I'm too selfish. I couldn'T have done what they did. And so a world that had been hostile and difficult, all of a sudden the veil is lifting and I'm starting to see the truth that actually the people in the world have been more tolerant and more forgiving and more accepting of me than I ever would have been with them if the tables were turned. How wrong can you get? And every time I dismantled, this was our course, one of these judgments, it's like a ratcheting down of the ego. It's wrong about my mother. Wrong about my father. Wrong about myself. Wrong about sister. Wrong about ex. Wrong about the ex before that. Wrong about her ex before her. wrong about the book. It's like you're getting smaller. And I have a friend from Canada who says that spiritual growth is not addition, it's subtraction. We grow towards God and towards others by self-reduction because the ego not only edges God out, it edges people out. And so I started to get this ego reduction, but you know what happens. It happens to all of us. It doesn't matter how surrendered you are. The ego grows back like a bad tumor. Do you ever have this experience? I remember this on a couple occasions, but one in particular, I just spent several hours with a guy listening to A Fifth Step. Very connected, very grateful that God is in his life and God's in my life. I saw myself in this guy. I felt community. I thought, oh, my God, we're so much alike. This is amazing. I felt very spiritual. And I went to a meeting that night. And I'm not even in the meeting 10 minutes. and I don't even know what to call it. So I call it the noticer. The noticer came on, you know, that thing that you look around the meeting and you notice, you notice what's wrong with people. I noticed some girl that just had a boob job, got up and started walking around the room showing off her tits, you now. I noticed the people who drank four cups of coffee and didn't put money in the basket. I noticed that people that were just talking and you know it's phony. My God, that can't be real. So you can hear the angel wings flapping in the background when they share, you know, and what's happening. A guy like me who was connected and smaller became bigger and more disconnected. And I didn't even know that that just happens. It's, and I guess it is part and parcel of the chronic nature of this spiritual malady. You know, the illusion, the book has a great illusion in chapter 3. It says that the delusion that we are like other people or that we presently may be, like if you did a really good job with the steps, you'll be over all this crap. You know what? I'll be able to walk hand-in-hand with Bill and Bob out into the sunshine of the spirit, you know. But it doesn't happen that way because of the chronic nature of this disease. And Wilson is very brilliant in our traditions, and in a couple traditions he talks about what's going to mess me up here? Money, property, prestige, and I think if he wrote this today, he'd put sex in there. The things that puff me up and pump me up and give me a false sense of security when my ultimate reliance is supposed to be in God. And inadvertently, the God that shines through you. Because God shines through people in AA. I've gotten help. I've had things happen in AA where, oh, that had to have been God because this guy is not that bright. Where they say, you know, they just, they'll say something, they'll see it's like, and I've heard it happen to me or I'm working with a new guy or some guy I sponsor and he is in deep trouble and I really truly have the desire to help him. I don't want him to suffer but the truth is I got nothing. I don'T know what to say to him and I'M frustrated and then something funny happens. It's almost, the book refers to it as the great reality deep down within us. It's Almost Like a Portal Opens Up and I'll hear myself say words I've never said before and I don't know where they come from but they're perfect. It's exactly what he needed to hear and I think that's the way God shines through some of us sometimes. I was doing that with a guy one time and what I was saying to him was so amazing, I thought, my God, I'd never heard that before. I thought I should write this down. You know? and that's when we ask god in the 11th in the prayer of saint francis to make me a channel i think that sometimes happens sometimes but our 11th step warns us don't presume to be inspired at all times if you do you'll pay for that presumption with all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. I have to be constantly on guard to the ego, and it's clamoring to me. And I am very capable of imagining crap is God's will when it's really mine. Instead of trying to align my will with God's, I start to fantasize that God's come to his senses, and he sees it my way. I remember the first time I was a year, year and a half, maybe two years sober. I was in early sobriety, and there was a girl. Every good AA story starts out with, and There Was a Girl. And there was this girl. She was almost 90 days sober. She'd been a prostitute. She Was hot. I mean, she was cute, and she liked me, which is big on my list. Because I didn't, I felt so unworthy. I couldn't believe a cute girl like this would want to be with a guy like me. And it was the only time my sponsor, my first sponsor was never the arbiter of my sex conduct. He just he wanted me to learn the lessons. He wanted me to stay. It was more like, oh, yeah, you're going to do that. Well, OK, I want you to go to a lot of meetings. I want You to work with a lot. And he would just try to offset my crazy with spiritual actions right so but it was the only time he ever became the arbiter of my sex conduct and he said to me he said you need to stay away from her she's really sick I looked at him I said dick we're this is a we're all sick here. See, you already see the end coming, don't you? Yeah, I know. And then I said, I think she's my soulmate. And he rose his eyes like, what? And I said no, no, no, listen, listen. You know that my thing, my choice was I drank a ton of Richard's Wild Irish Rose. She drank Richard's Wildlife Rose and he couldn't see the kismet and what i'm trying to align god's will with mine and i'm imagining that it's gonna when i said to him i think she's my soulmate i think i meant that when i set it but it's not coming from my spirit it's coming frommy ego it'scoming because bob wants what bob wants when bob wants what bob wants and it's a driving force and so uh i i i'm one of those kind of guys i always have had a sponsor and more importantly you can have a sponsor and not get much good out of it because the burden of the lesson is on the student it's you can't have a terrible sponsor but if you're sponsorable god will work through the idiot and give you everything you need. You could have the most spiritual giant and alcohol exonymous, and if you're not sponsorable, not much good will come from that because the transformation is in the surrender. It's in the surrender. And what are we surrendering? Well, the first thing and the third step, our will. I think that's paramount. I think if I could truly and consistently abandon and surrender my will to God, I think I could mess with my life because I wouldn't have an opinion about it. I wouldn'T be driven. It's my will. It's what I want. And that is a difficult thing because I want... And I remember I was sober many years and I was looking back at my life and I Was trying to find Was there ever a time in my sobriety? I had moments, I guess, when I would just get that right buzz. But in my sobriety, was there ever a time where everything was perfect? Was there never a time that if I sat and thought about it, I didn't want for anything? Was there every a time I felt complete? You know, in the Bible, in Genesis, when it talks about God creating the heavens and the earth and the animals, etc., through everything, every day that he creates part of the creation, at the end they use the word, And that was, it's tov, tau, tov. That was tov and tov in Hebrew means complete, not lacking, perfect, exact. But when he comes to the creating man, he doesn't tov he doesn' He doesn't say it's Tov because we're not. I got a God hole inside of me that will push me to struggle into the darkness or to struggle into the light. And every single day, I get a choice. And our book talks about that. It says, it talks about being crushed in sobriety. I've been crushed many times by these self-imposed crises as I can't postpone or evade. And then it says, we realize that God's either everything or he's nothing. He either is or he isn't. And then he says, Bob, what's your choice to be today? And you will make the choice by your actions, Not by what you believe and not what you think. You'll make them by how you show up. There was a great member of AA back in the 80s who was a pilot, and he used to say, God, this guy was amazing. He used to see the most stuff you'd never hear anywhere else. And one time he said that AA could stand for altered attitudes, which kind of put me on the defensive because all my life people have been telling me have a bad attitude and then he said that an attitude is something that us pilots talk about it's the angle of approach he said the alcoholic has had a skewed selfish self-serving self-centered attitude or angle of approached to life they told a story about who's in this little plane I know I'm not a pilot so I could get some of the details wrong but he was in this sort of plane and evidently he went up above its ceiling, higher than you're supposed to go, I guess. And he hit what I think is called a wind shear and it's, I suppose, opposing currents of air and they spin you. And it goes into what he referred to as a tailspin. He said it's the most frightening thing you've ever experienced because you're spinning out of control with a feeling that overcomes you that you're going to crash and die. And he said, when that happens, he said your instinct is to pull back on that stuff, to try to pull that nose up. He said, but you learn that if you do that, you will surely crash that plane and die What you must do runs completely contrary to your emotional position. You have to push that thing forward and let it bounce back on itself. And that plane was made by its creator and maker to right itself under those conditions. And when he said that, I thought about that so many times over the years. The evidence in my experience has shown up that that's the way my life is. If you are like me and you go back to times when things are bad in your sobriety and you've hurt people and you're hurting yourself, if you send a CSI team in there, they're only going to find my DNA and my fingerprints. And why was that? Because I was scared and I pulled back on that throng. I pulled back on that stick. There's a great line in the fear inventory, and it says that fear, self-centered fear, will set in motion trains of circumstances which will bring guys like me horrible, misfortune I feel I don't deserve. And then it says, but Bob, didn't you set the ball rolling? later in the book it says we made earlier in the book it said we made decisions based on self which later placed me in that position to be hurt so Alcoholics Anonymous is trying to get me to do something I've never been good at and that's to be a man and to take the responsibility children never take the responsibility adults do self-actualizing adults stand up. Yeah, I was wrong. I did that. If I was in your shoes, that would have hurt me. I'm sorry. What can I do to make it right? And so Alcoholics Anonymous is trying to get me to grow up, I guess, and not be so full of myself that I'm defended and not being so full of myself that I have to justify myself. and rationalize myself. And so this is all part and parcel of the suffering from a chronic illness called alcoholism that begins where the bottle ends. I know there's some reasonably new people here in your first year. Maybe you got here like I did with an idea that's erroneous. And the idea is, yes, in the step one, I am powerless over alcohol. Absolutely. And my life was unmanageable. Of course it was. The way I drink is if you've connected the unmanagability in your life to drinking. Here's what I found. My life is more unman manageable sober because I got nothing now to dial down my emotions. I got nothing now to put between me and the results of my actions. I got Nothing to soothe my mind and my emotions, and that is really what's unmanageable. That is really what causes my suffering sober. I'm going to read a little paragraph when we come back after this morning you may not want to come back I probably wouldn't except I have to be here I read this when I was about 10 years I was 11 years sober and I just lost my first marriage and I read this and my hope my hope at that point was to find a woman I could be connected to because I thought it would soothe my feelings of loneliness and depression. I thought, I think that's the missing piece here. And I read this and it made me sick to my stomach. Maybe it'll fit you, maybe not. It is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know for their own good, or we depend upon them far too much for my good. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us for they are human too and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. Isn't that so true? It's like I want you to fill my vacancies. Now, I don't say that. I don'T even say it to myself but watch the position I take, the angle of approach to my insistent demands in this way our insecurity grows and festers when we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires they revolt and resist us heavily then we develop hurt feelings a sense of persecution and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, just try harder. I'll tell you something. When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Redouble our... Where was I? Our efforts at controlling continue to fail. our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any of those about us, of true brotherhood, but small comprehension. Alcoholism truly is a disease of separation. Alcoholisme is painful because there's no connection and there's no unity. And I may be the guy who did that through my judgments and my opinions of others and God and my wife or whatever but I'm the guy who's doing it and so unity so that my personal recovery becomes paramount on AA unity and we're talking about more than just a member of your home group I used the 12 traditions for about maybe two decades to run my company and it's you know it's amazing you can present these principles not as as alcoholics anonymous but present them as principles to conduct yourself by and normal people go oh yeah common welfare yeah good oh group conscience oh this is amazing our purpose to help our customer oh yeah this is all good yeah no opinions great this is a great idea amazing. Alcoholics go, I don't know. Because it threatens the control. It's like, I don't want unity as much as to be, I want unity of the kingdom below me. But I don't wanna be one with, I wanna be One Above. How many times have people like us gone to our sponsors or our friends about our relationships and it all boils down to the same thing i can't get them i can'T get her to mind right she won't do she's not doing it right and who's playing god here right who's climbed up onto the throne of judgment who's created the separation here I'm over here and you're over there who the hell did that it was me and so as we start to go through these traditions start to realize something that they in conjunction with the 12 steps because the 12 steps really are a process to uncover discover and discard the things that are blocking me there is exactly what it says in agnostics about to uncover the God within me this great reality I have to get rid of the things that are obscuring me from that that uses examples of three aspects of the ego pomp calamity worship of other things that I have to get rid of these things. And step three coming, the bridge between step three and step four refers to this again. This is referred to over and over and over again in AA literature. It says this decision in step three is a vital and crucial step. But Bob, you think you're home now. You're not. It has little permanent effect unless followed at once and maybe forever at once by a continuous effort to get rid of the things in ourselves that are blocking us. I don't know if you've ever felt, had those feelings. You're sober a long time and you almost gave up the hope of being a part of. You almost have had to reinforce yourself and how right you are in order to justify how separate you are. And maybe I've given up hope because I can't imagine being free of me that much that I could be with you. And that's really the deal. Self-reduction at depth. And here's the problem with that. The steps are the methodology to reduce self. The traditions are the roadmap. what am i going after here the answer to just step one the problem is defined in two aspects powerless over alcohol and now bob now that you're sober you can't really manage your own life can you you can'T rest happiness and satisfaction with this world by your very very best efforts It still ain't right, is it, Bob? Well, it's close. It ain't right, is it? In our book in Vision for You, it talks about guys like me who drink again. You know, we try to puff ourselves up. I love this part of the book because I hear people in AA, newcomers say, almost say this, they paraphrase it but they don't even know they're paraphrasing the book. You know that part where it says, newcomer says, oh, work better, feel better, I'm having a better time and then it goes on to say something that's very interesting and true in my experience, as I would tell everybody how grateful I was to be sober, and then drink two weeks later. It says he will presently try the old game again. Why? Because if I could be honest, and I can't, but if I couldn't, I would have to admit that I'm not really happy about my sobriety. There's something missing. I'm not really happy and I'm not really satisfied but I roll over it with accomplishment with acquisition of things that should make me happy but they don't for very long so people drink again well you know what's happening in today's world this didn't happen back in the 70s and 80s the medical profession backed away from us because they went through the 70s where, I remember, this is, this sounds ludicrous today with the knowledge we have, but it was true. Back in the 70s, if you had alcoholism and you were newly sober, they gave you a prescription for Valium. I mean, it was common. It was just, it was as common as antidepressants are today. And then what happened is so many people died, so many people ended up extremely addicted to these benzos that the medical profession just went, oops, and backed away until the pressure from the billion, hundred billion dollar pharmaceutical industry coupled with the medical profession who never really did buy a spiritual solution for this started get back in the game again. I watched it happen. I watched that happen. And so what happens, you get a guy 20 years sober and he's just lost another relationship or another job or his life is dissatisfying to him and he gets depressed. There's 100 doctors out there. All you have to do is say the word, I feel depressed. They're reaching for their prescription pad. I remember I was in about 70, 77. I was at a halfway house and I was depressed. Of course I was. And if you looked at my life, you'd be depressed too. I mean, I should have been depressed, right? I burnt my life to the ground for God's sakes. And the guy who ran the place, he sent me, he got me an appointment with a psychiatrist. And I shuffle off. I feel like a leper, you know, going to the psych, sitting in the waiting room with the other lepers, you And I eventually go into the doctor's office and he's sitting there and telling him about how sucky my life is. I'm in a halfway house. My parents won't have anything to do with me. They won't help me anymore. My last girlfriend won't even talk to me. I'm a mess. And he said something to me that got my attention. He said, he said, those people in that halfway house and those people you work with, they don't appreciate the sacrifice you're making not drinking. I thought, I like this guy. And he said there's no reason for you to feel that way. We got this new medication that just came out this year that is designed for guys like you. And as he reached for his prescription pad, I started to feel better. He hadn't even given me anything yet, but he gave me hope because all my hope is locked into my elbow, like as if I can drink something, take something. And you know what happened? I got some relief from that, but I am insatiable. Relief is never enough relief for me. And it wearied on me, and I felt just as bad and just as depressed on the medication he gave me. After a while, it was good in the beginning. And I started to yearn for more relief because I'm a more kind of guy. You can't... How many people in this room have ever drank, when you're drinking and taking drugs, ever got to a point where you go, don't need any more, this is just right? I never have. Matter of fact, I can't even imagine that. I went to a party up in Quincy, right outside of Boston one time, spring break. And it was a good party. We were doing shots, beer bongs, smoking hashish, snorting a little bit of coke. I mean, it was great. It was a great party. I've been hitting it for about an hour or so and a guy came through the party with a bag full of capsules I didn't even ask him what they were. I just took a couple of them. Well, it turned out to be animal tranquilizer Well in about an our I'm laying on the floor and I can't get up but I'm still conscious So I'm trying to talk people into bringing me drinks, right? True story because I am insatiable and what is this what's the driving force behind that I think it's what Carl Jung says in the letter to Bill Wilson in the early 60s it's a misinterpreted thirst it looks like a thirst for alcohol or drugs or any of that or sex or whatever but it's not and the reason you know that because you get it and it ain't enough it's not enough Jung says he thinks it's an yearning of my being for unity or maybe a union with god so i'm looking everywhere else for the solution to fill my holes and it's always there every meeting i go to they talk about it but it can't possibly be my answer let's take a break 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. Thanks for watching!