Bondage of Self – Workshop – 2023 – Part 6 of 6 – Bob D.

If I'm the spiritual leader, we're screwed, I'll tell you. I'm Bob Darrow, I'm an alcoholic. And only through the grace of a God that truly I was afraid to believe in because of my unworthiness and good sponsorship, a set of actions outlined in a book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous and a purpose other than me of helping other drunks, and consequently I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering medication since October 31st, 1978. And I'm... It's actually my personal best. You know, truly. If I drank again, I'd never live to... I want to thank Rick for bringing me up here from Sacramento in his 300-mile-an-hour Tesla. I got closer to God on the way up here. And I want thank Kim and all the people in the committee. I've been involved in a lot of events in AA. It's joyous, useful, fulfilling work to put something like this on. And I'd like to thank David, who I've known for a long time. He's the guy that's back there with the headphones on that you'd think he's probably listening to the recording and making sure it's right. He's actually listening to talks of himself. Yeah. I want to know who's here, because it'll affect me. It'll change what I share this weekend. Who's here in their first 30 days of abstinence? Anybody? This is Darren on the phone. Darren, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you for admitting it, because I wouldn't have admitted it, cause you'll be gang 12-stepped in here, I'll tell ya. Anybody in the... How about in the first year? Wow. How many people are sober under 10 years. Wow, okay. That seems to be the majority. How about 10 to 20? 20 to 30 30 to 40 40 to 45 over 45 over 45 Oh, hey. Wow. Glad you're here. I'm always... The people that are sober, the new people and the people that are sober a long time and still active, they always make me feel good in a room. There's a lot of people. I'm very active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a home group. I probably go to probably eight meetings a week. I got two hospital and institution commitments panels to this day. I've always had that because my first sponsor had that. That's why you learn what you learn when you're new, you know. And I sponsor guys and I do all that stuff, not so I can come up here and tell you about it. It just seems to add something. It changes me in here. You know, I've lived my life a huge portion, a big portion of it where I was my primary purpose. And that sucks. And I've live the last 40 some years with a purpose other and greater than myself and that's to help other people. I don't think there's anything more important to me than having a purpose in my life. A reason to get out of bed in the morning, you know. You know what your life's about. And this was baffling to me. In the years I was in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous and institutions, I came to my first meeting of Alcoholic Anonymous. I was probably 20 years old, and I was at an institution. I was made to go, didn't want to go. AA was offensive to me, it was like horrible. It was worse than church, Amway, any of that. I mean, it was, I didn't know what AA was, but to me it looked like a combination of Amway and the Salvation Army or something. It was like creepy to me, you know, I just, and I was very defended against you and very judgmental against you because I'm a defended kind of guy. So I didn'T get much out of it. But in those years when I was in and out, I learned in my innermost self what it is to be an alcoholic. And I tell you, I think what it says in step one in the book, it might very well be the most difficult thing an alcoholic ever does. Because if you look at it the way it says it in chapter three, it's not that we admitted we were powerless over alcohol dash that our lives had become unmanageable it's we learned which means and that's that learning process almost killed me of seven years almost seven years of relapsing years of swearing to myself in county jail waking up with ink on my fingers of in a detox you know crying and swearing at myself i'll never drink again and drinking again. It says we learned we had to fully concede. Fully is like a lot. I think it's more than half. We had to completely concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. Well, why is that so hard? Well, there's a line in another part of the book that says the alcoholic's problem lies mainly in his mind. He has a mind that doesn't want to look at this stuff i have a mind that hides the truth for me for convenience for to soothe me for comfort and i don't want To be an alcoholic so my alcoholism which is killing me has hidden from me in a forest of other problems use of narcotics stimulants smoking pot chronic depression anxiety to the point of panic that feeling of not of separateness they call it today they have a term for it they even have medication for it that social anxiety disorder lonely lonely problems with employment money i can't seem to hold on to money with women i mean i can't get them to mind you know just i got it's i got problems everywhere and in it's in the center of this forest of other problems is the one problem that's through that's causing all the others there's a tree if you ever been over to the island of maui in this in the town of lahaina in the square there'sa tree it's one tree but it looks like a whole forest but in the center is the one trunk that comes out and all the other trees grow from that and that's my alcoholism is like that and i can't see it my friend used to he died like 40 35 40 years ago he used to say alcoholism's the one disease that keeps telling you you don't got it or it's something else and i don't know what it is about me that i will stare at the differences and ignore the similarities you know i've i would listen to in the years i was in and out in in those rehabs i'd listen to aa speakers that would come in and i dont hear the connection i dont here the similarities i just sit there and judge them you know and i just i look for What's the differences? You know, I remember the first time I was in a meeting and they were reading part of Bill's story. I'm not a stockbroker. I didn't go World War I. I never saw when he talked about his drinking. I didn'T see the things that are so uncommon. Now today, if I read Bill's Story, I'm right there with him all the way. The things that Are different are just circumstantial. They're meaningless. but the important stuff is the stuff i connect with and i could have done that in aa if i didn't have a recovery resistant mind if i did not have the kind of ego that defends itself against change and i did i did know i did that jerry i remember sitting at a meeting i was in this rehab they brought it so sunday afternoon they brought a speaker in and i think this guy might have been a good speaker because he started to get to me a little bit and i don't really listen because i when somebody's yammering in aa it's a it's an nice time for me to think about me you know what i mean no no i mean just you know i mean it's right and i so i'm just but then he said a couple things that hit a little close to home like he talked about wetting the bed oh that's happened to me a lot he talked about black eyes and he's getting a little close to home and here's what my head did my head's is it's trying to get a little squirmy listen this guy because i'm identifying a little bit and my head looked at him and went oh that's the stupidest looking toupee i've ever saying. And with that judgment and opinion, I could throw out everything he said and it defended me from connecting here because if I connect with you, that means I'm like you. And if I'm like you, then what would work for you would work for me. But I don't want to do what you, I'm too selfish. I'm too arrogant to do what you people do. I fit the old adage, you can always tell an alcoholic, you just can't tell him much i'm very full of myself and the sad sad thing about that is i don't know any of this is true now in hindsight i i know it very clearly but when i was going through it i didn't know that was me and i i think one of the things that had to happen to me is I had to try to practice that great obsession of every abnormal drinker is that somehow, someday, some way I'll control and enjoy my drinking. I had go after that and fail and fail and fail. And you know why we fail at that? Because if we succeeded we would never come here. Right? and all the drug use was to to serve that great obsession i i did uh i was a blackout drinker any blackout drunkers in here wow i'm always afraid i'll answer ask that question everybody will just sit there look at me like oh my god i'm in an al-anon meeting i was a terrible blackout drinker and i don't know about you guys but nobody ever came up to me and said things the next day like oh you were so helpful last night i mean i get people mad at me you peed in our kitchen you know you hit on my wife you stole my stash you passed out on my front lawn i had the worst one i was sick on my way to the liquor started to get a bottle of wine i got the shakes and this guy cuts in he said i remember you you're the guy that told everybody at the party last night you beat bruce lee in a karate match i was like oh i want to hang myself so if you're a blackout drinker uh it gets bad so i discovered that if i did certain drugs when I drink, I could drink longer and I wouldn't blackout. Well, that sounds like a good idea, except occasionally it's you don't want to remember some of the stuff you did. And I was a terrible blackout drinker. I did other drugs because I found that this I didn't understand. And this is almost what killed me. It's not just that I have an abnormal reaction to alcohol. I have everything that Dr. Silkworth talks about, an allergy to alcohol, that when I drink it, I'm overcome with a powerful yearning for more. It's as if deep in the center of my being is an unrecognized, unrealized switch, and only alcohol throws that switch, and it's the gut to have more switch. and every time I drank alcohol without exception that would switch and get thrown and I'm the kind of guy if I'm at your house and maybe you had a couple of us sitting around watching a game or something or I don't know playing whatever we're doing and we got a case of beer we kill that case of Beer and there ain't no more and there Ain't No Way To Get More you know what I'll do I'll go to your bathroom and go through your medicine cabinet I'll take whatever's there if the bottle says do not operate heavy machinery I get excited and why is that? because I'm a pill head? no, because I am an alcoholic and when I drink alcohol it does something to me that it only does to alcoholics regardless of all the other problems now i started to get that probably in the mid probably about nights about 76 i started to really understand from from failure from the from the constant attempts to reel it in and i can't i remember one time in particular i came to i was staying on a guy's couch because i i didn't have any place to live and i got felt sorry for me let me stay on his couch and i'm uh i come to one morning and i'd had a the night before it was a bad blackout those kind of blackouts that you don't remember it's not the whole night's not black that you i remember kind of little snapshots of things and everything that i remember these little snapshots make me cringe inside and i feel horrified because it's all bad it's old and i'm scared i thought i could have went to some of that i might i could have gone to jail now there's a whole group of people i can't go around them anymore i can't even go where they go because i don't want to see them i'm so ashamed of my behavior and i've been talking to myself i always i always try to you know whenever i have a problem i'm like this maybe some of you are like this i always stare at the problems trying to figure out what to do i never come up with a good answer because what i'm looking for i'm working with but i'm always looking and so i came up with little plan because i'm supposed to meet some friends of mine down at dots which is the corner bar where we shoot pool and sometimes they go out play music one of the guy's houses and stuff and i need i need to do that because i've not feel i feel horrible horrible i got the tremors are back again and i need to calm my nerves and i thought i got it i can't do that i i need to do that but i can t do that and i don't know what to do and i come up with a plan now if you're here and you're going to drink again you need a plan it's not that it'll help but it'll soothe your mind going into your demise so i had a plan and here's the plan it made perfect sense to me i'm going to go down to that bar and i'm gonna slow sip eight drinks eight's a good number i remember thinking eight i never did anything too bizarre on eight drinks that's always 12 to 15. you know what i mean somewhere up in there eight's of good number is a secure number i can calm my nerves and with somewhere in the process of drinking eight drinks i can have some fun shoot some pool with my buddies man that eight this is a good plan and it was except the one right away the idea of me slow sipping anything is ridiculous i can't but i'm drinking trying to make it stretch it a little bit you know not playing some pool i'm having fun like starting to get calm inside it's good starting to getting that feeling a little bit feeling of freedom from the horrible emotions and thoughts i had coming in there and what a plan until i got to the seventh drink when i got to the sixth drink it was like a spiritual awakening that eight was a bad number you know what i mean it was a terrible number what was i thinking that was a stupid number 12 is a better number and what i don't understand is that that is an allergic reaction to alcohol that i can't see it and i can't see it because it uses my own mind against me and i don't think it's a craving i don'T think it'S an allergy i think i changed my mind but i always changed my mind every single time every drink of alcohol i've ever taken in my life has made me feel like my god i'd like to have another drink and that's what makes me an alcoholic well there's the other aspect, it almost killed me. It's not just that I have this abnormal reaction to alcohol, and God knows I do, but I have an abnormal reaction-to-abstinence, and it's hard to see, and it's harder to put your finger on. But every time I get sober, I ain't right. Now, I don't know why I'm not right, and I can't even describe to you why I'm that way. I can even tell you how I feel because I don't understand it. Dr. Silkworth, in the book, he says, guys like me, when we stop drinking, what happens? Well, we get restless. You know, that inability to be settled anywhere. You know? I just... You ever watch a dog circle a room looking for its spot to lay down on the dog and they can't find its spot? I'm restless. I'm irritable. Don't know I'm irritable. Don't want to be irritable because irritable people kind of irritate me. I am not irritable, but I am very bright and I can see the stupidity in people quickly. It's a gift, it's a gifted gift and they rub me the wrong way and I don't suffer stupidity well and then I'm chronically malcontent and that is very baffling to me. Why I can live in a world and I observe people that are happy and satisfied and I look at what they have and I work like hell to get what they have, only I don't feel the way they felt having it. There's something about me that no matter how good something is the best girl I've ever been with, the best job I ever had get that Harley I always wanted, playing in the band with those guys I always want. Whatever it is from the moment it is mine, the shine starts to wear off that crap and i don't know why i don' t know why am i always unsatisfied why am I always unhappy why am always seems there's a heaviness about life why am i prone to depression what is this and i didn't know i and i got sober in 1978 and i'll tell you i was sober probably 10 years before i understood what that was about and i was working with a guy in indian springs prison and i was trying to it's hard to sponsor people in prison because you only see him like you can go up there once a week and i'm working with this guy and he's he's talking about some stuff and he'S talking about doing time and how easy it is not to drink and this is like his fourth or fifth time in prison he's so easy for him to stay sober when he's in prison but the moment he gets out every single time he goes and gets drunk. And I started realizing, my God, of course, because when I stopped drinking, I feel like I'm doing time. And if I really was doing time, at least my insides would match my outsides. There'd be a funny kind of sad rightness about that. But you put me out in the streets, you put Me out where everybody seems to be happy. and i don't know why they're happy i i mean oh god i just what's wrong with me why do i feel so weird why don't i don'T see any i DON'T see anybody in aa i DONT see anybody at work i DON'T SEE ANYBODY ON THE STREETS THAT LOOKS THE WAY I FEEL AND I'M A PHONY I'MA PRETEND GUY I PRETend like i'm cool i pretend like i feel good i you know that that passage in our book where it talks about the newcomer saying, well, I work better, feel better, having a better time. And then it says BS. You know, that's not... He's going to drink again because the truth is he's not happy about his sobriety. And I wasn't happy about my sobriete. But because I'm all front, no back, I pretend like I'm the pretend guy because, my God, I'm so concerned with what you think of me. And I don't feel like a fit So I try to act like I fit, hoping if I act like you act, maybe I'll feel like you feel. And I never do. I always feel like I'm coming from behind. I remember one time I was in this halfway house and I was bored. I was restless and I just I was feeling bad. I'm trying to fight off a depression. So I decided to go to the mall. This was back in the 70s when malls were becoming popular. And there's a lot of, you know, hot looking girls sometimes in the malls, things like that, that nature. I wanted to go to this mall and I noticed something in the mall that was baffling to me there was a lot of people that they weren't stoned they weren'T drinking and they were just walking around big smiles on their face and they WERE HAPPY FOR NO REASON how can that be and I you know I figured it out you know why they're happy because THEY'RE STUPID I would have to lose 30 IQ points to be happy like that. See, they just can't, they're not sharp enough to see the problems in their life. They're not sharpened up to see the injustices around them. They're sharp enough to see the stupidity as I am burdened to see. And I think it's intelligence. It's not intelligence. It's the antithesis of intelligence. It's ego. that something inside of me is desperate because i feel so less than it's desperate to elevate me above everybody else and i don't know what to do so one of my defense mechanisms is to judge you and pull you down and find fault with you hoping hoping against hope that i will level the playing field hoping if i can find enough crap wrong with you i won't feel so bad about me and you know if you've if you've been like that you know what happens it doesn't make you feel better about yourself it just makes you feel more separate and more alone alcoholism is a lonely lonely business our book says the alcoholic will know a loneliness such as few do in 1978 on my last run I try to kill myself. And I tried to kill myself because my drinking had about three years prior to that, it had turned on me. And the last three years of my drinking, I'm chasing the ghosts of parties past and I can't catch them. The last couple years of my drinking, it's not a party. I'm not laughing and carrying on. I're not talking to bar or club, talking to girls. I am the guy who drinks in depression who drinks in horrible feelings of loneliness many times if i was crashing on your couch or somewhere where there's a phone at four or five o'clock in the morning three o' clock i'd get on your phone i'll call up people i went to grade school with i'm so lonely i called an ex-girlfriend up one time the minute i heard her voice i was so lonely and so depressed i just i started trying not that was kind of half crying going we should have got married And then her husband gets on the phone and threatens me, you know. This is not a party. This is pathetic. And yet you get me three months sober in a halfway house. You know what I do? I start imagining there's a party where there isn't one. I start fantasizing that I can get high again like I did when I was 20 years old. And I can't. i don't i've known uh hundreds if not thousands of alcoholics who have crossed over that line into late stage alcoholism and in late stage alcoolism you've rung every ounce of fun out of it that's turned on you and i know everybody every alcoholic i've talked to has chased the fun as the book says into the gates of insanity or death you never catch it because it's gone it's gone and I'm dying and I am feeling more ashamed of myself and more of a failure and more depressed because I am ruining my life chasing something I can't catch it wouldn't have been bad if I could have got an hour every night of feeling free and lit up and you know that ease and comfort that I used to get You know, it would almost be a good exchange if a genie popped out of a bottle and said to me, hey, Bob, tell you what. I'll give you six months out of every year of partying like you did when you were 20 years old. You got to spend the other six months in a horrible prison locked up. What do you think? I'd think, yeah, sign me up for that. That'd be good. Yeah, right? Because the truth is, I want that more than I want anything. I might have a new girlfriend and tell her how important she is. Push comes to shove. I'm chasing the ghosts of parties past at her expense. My parents left them in the dust. When I stood on that bridge in 1978 trying to kill myself, there was nobody left. I had been arrested right not too long before that for a hit-and-run DUI in a stolen, borrowed car. And they sentenced me to two years and then stayed the commitment, put me in a long-term treatment center, which I was supposed to stay for a year. Couldn't. I can't stay sober a year? When they say in our book lack of power is our dilemma, I mean, we all got a little bit of power. You know, a little bit. I can get like a mule in a hailstorm and not drink day in and day out and week in and week out for six, eight months. But a year? Every day I'm sober with untreated alcoholism just wears on my ass. It just... AA was a funny place for me. You'd hear these, be it some recovery house and all these do-gooders from AA come in to tell you, you've ruined your life. You're there because you've ruins your life and these AA people come in to tell their miracle stories and their gratitude stories. I remember sitting there one time and thinking, oh my God, I've died and gone to hell. It's not bad enough that I've ruined my life. No one will talk to me. When they gave me the phone call in jail, there was nobody to call but I have to spend the rest of eternity listening to these idiots tell me how wonderful they are? Oh my God, this is horrible. Because I have this abnormal reaction to abstinence. And I don't know it. I think AA has got good news and bad news. Bob, the good news is if you go to thousands of these stupid meetings you might stay sober the rest of your life and the bad news is you're going to live a long time. because abstinence feels like i'm doing time and i and that's what guys like me reap if i just stop drinking that'swhatitfeelslike to have untreated alcoholism a disease that demands treatment demands it and it'll use my emotions and my thoughts to wear on me and wear on me and wear on me until, you know, the day comes. About two months ago when they released me from the county, I knew I was never going to drink again. Now something's happened inside of me slowly where on this particular day it seems like a great idea to drink again. And I can't remember how I was sobbing, swearing to myself I'll never touch that stuff again can't remember that you know what i remember i remember the things i should forget i remember things that aren't even true silkworth the doctor's opinion says after a time guys like me can't differentiate the truth from the false i can't and i don't know that i can because my thinking seems so real to me i don' t remember how drinking is turned on me and now I drink in depression and it's horrible and lonely and it is not a party anymore. I remember the drinking of when I was 20 years old, 18 years old when it was magic and I am chasing something so in 1978 when I am trying to kill myself if some AA member that I had met in a meeting somewhere would have come along and saw me and he would have said to me, Bob what the hell are you doing? come with us come back to aa work the steps do that stuff you're you're alcoholism's killing you're going to kill yourself for god's sakes i would i just would you don't understand it's not alcoholism well what is it well i don't know it feels like i'm dying of loneliness because I don't fit anywhere drinking and I don't sit anywhere sober and my grand sponsor was a guy named Chuck I used to love listening to Chuck Chamberlain talk one of the things Chuck said often was that there was one problem and it contained all problems and it was conscious and unconscious separation between me and you that's why I never fit with you and me and God, God was so far away i died he was so far away i just rather choose him to be an atheist he can't possibly help me anyway and i was even disconnected from life and disconnected from myself obsessively self-concerned selfish self-centered people like me my selfishness is so extreme that it can pull me away from my own internal moral compass i will compromise my own i'm not compromising your principles i'm compromising mine there's something inside me that always knew what was right or wrong but the need for gratification and security and self-grandizement sometimes clamored in me so loudly that i would i would do things that i know i shouldn't do this or even worse you think oh my god this is gonna turn out bad but but it might be good for an hour you You know, you meet some girl and you think, I wouldn't even want my sponsor to know I had lunch with her. But it could be fun for an hour. I'm bragging when I say an hour, five minutes. So that this selfishness and self-centeredness can drive not only me to be separate from you and separate from God in life, but even from me. No wonder I'm so alone. No wonder. I'm still confused. I don't know who I am. I don' t know what my life is about. None of it makes sense. It's where Baffle Blot, the book says. And yet, from 1971 on to this day, I noticed something in AA. There were some of the old timers, not all of them, there were a few old timERS that looked like they needed a drink, But there was some old timers that they just, they walked with a level of comfort. They walked with the level of purpose that was beyond me. As if they truly, they weren't a pretend guy like I was. They truly knew who they were. And they were the guys that were properly armed with information about themselves. They'd worked the steps. And there was no mystery about what their life's about. They knew what their lives about. They were given a purpose greater than themselves. They swapped the purpose they got sober with. We all get sober with the same purpose, me. I am my primary purpose, my feelings, my security, my sex life, what you think of me, me, we, me I have my own primary purpose and you guys have nudged me and pushed me through a step and service and tradition process to swap out me for a purpose greater than myself and that's to help other drugs. And when you claim that, then the worst of you becomes the best of you. When you claim that, not only does your life have purpose, it makes sense. The stuff I wouldn't tell anybody when I got sober, now I'm telling people because it helps people. It all makes sense there's nothing i don't think there's anything more greater than having purpose in your life i get up in the morning i got purpose i got phone calls to return i got sponsors to talk about i got commitments i i got a purpose in my life that is amazing for me i'm not the loose cannon anymore on the deck of my ship i have my life has structure i love that but i did i resisted that for years what happened to me is i had this failed suicide attempt and i came out for that and i was so demoralized i had a moment on this bridge where i couldn't i couldn'T bring myself to jump not because I'm afraid of dying because I'M AFRAID THIS isn't high enough and i've had a string of not good luck and uh with my not good luck stream i'll probably end up paralyzed from the neck down in some charity ward for 50 years and nobody will bring you a drink because i don't have any friends left so i i broke down on that bridge i never felt lower i i think it it probably and truly was that state it talks about in our book of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization you you know pathetic you felt pathetic you've hated yourself you've loathed your and then this is a level even below all that that not only have i lost everybody that i cared about in my life not only if i burnt my life to the ground not only if i failed at being sober and i failed it drinking when i want to kill myself and make it all stop i failed at that too there's a that's a level of pathetic below anything i've ever known and i came off that bridge and i ended up in this through a bizarre series of circumstances that's baffling to me this day sometimes you look back in hindsight and you can see the hand of god in your life because it's at first you don't want to believe that but the coincidence is sometimes pile up and they're so overwhelming that what could it be except something and i i can't ended up in las vegas wasn't trying to go to las vega's trying to going to california ended up in los vegas at a detox and i think i believe through divine appointment i met my first sponsor because he was perfect for me. Perfect. He was a fanatical servant. He'd been delegate. He started the Las Vegas Roundup. He's on the board of a halfway house at one of the clubs. He started the retreat. He stated the first hospital and institution meetings in Las Vegas. I met him because he brought a meeting into the detox I was in twice a a week. This is not a guy who talks about AA, this is a guy who does AA every day of his life. And he was sober a long time and he had a tremendous life. I didn't even know it until later. He lived in a mansion up on a hill with tennis courts in his backyard and gardens and two brand new Cadillacs and looked out over the city of Las Vegas. I never expected that. And I thought, you know, you meet a guy on detox, you think, well, this guy evidently doesn't have a life. You know, he had a huge life, huge life. But at the center of his huge, robust, full life was a purpose that wasn't his life. His purpose was to look for guys like me. And he found me. And I made a deal with him. I said, would you sponsor me? And if you will, I'll do anything you ask me to do. And the journey began. And he was not a big book guy that much because back in the 70s, the wave of big book renaissance and consciousness didn't hit the fellowship for the most part around the United States until the early 1980s. Matter of fact, I listened to my first set of Joe and Charlie cassettes that came out of the 1980 International because Wesley Parrish went down there and he brought them down there. And he was enthralled with what they did in this little workshop down in Arkansas. And he brought him down there, he made a hundred copies of that workshop, and he gave them to the perfect person in each area of the country. he knew because wesley knew a lot of people he knew the guys that started the conferences that did the doers he handed them out to the doERS and within two three years joe and charlie were all over the world they changed aa they reintroduced us to something that we had unfortunately turned away from when the 12 steps in 12 traditions book was published in the early 50s nobody they the reason they that bill put that book together was to better bring the traditions into place and he was told by some people some people he respected that you better not just do a book just on the traditions nobody in a would buy it you're gonna have to put the steps in there too so he wrote the essays on the steps and published that book and not ever expecting that within a decade most of the fellowship would be starting step studies using that book and nobody was using the big book anymore but that had happened i remember back in the 70s my years in and out of a i could ask you could take the oldest old timer in an a group say how do you where do you find where it tells you how to work the fourth step they tell you the chapter four in the book the 12th step they they my first sponsor didn't even know where to find that in the big book and then joe and charlie came along and they they changed everything and i i heard that first set of cassettes my home group was a big book study and i heardthat first cassette in late 1980 uh so i got a set from somebody that came back from the international with them i listened to it and my home groups a big book study. And I'm listening to that, and I'm thinking, what the hell book are they talking about? Because they're saying things. Now we read the book, but nobody talked about the things that they were, nobody really looked at it. We'd read it, and this was so common back in the 70s, you'd read half a chapter of the big book, and then people would share on what they're grateful for they'd share about their day they'd share their drunk a log and the book was just kind of passing everybody by Joe and Charlie made it come alive and I remember hearing that stuff and I started putting that stuff in my life and it wasn't too long after that I started taking guys through that stuff you know it's funny the Hindus have a saying that the student doesn't learn the lesson until he becomes the teacher you really want to know how to work the steps help people work the stairs the student becomes the Teacher and learns the lesson and I that's so so true for me well I want to tie something in this weekend it might seem a little odd to some of you I'm curious how many people here have worked the steps good that's a it's a good good good gathering how many peopler sober a long time I've worked the steps more than once Wow how about more than twice more than five times and yet you wouldn't be going back and doing it if there wasn't something missing huh I I do I do Alcoholics Anonymous for the same reason I drank whiskey what did whiskey do for me got me high you could say yeah yeah give me a feeling of being able to come out play yeah yeah what did it do though what was what was this thing that was so valuable to me and the effect produced by alcohol it gave me a sense of unity Carl Jung in a letter to Bill Wilson said tonight in the early 60s he said that as a result of working with Roland hazard and countless other alcoholics that he came to the conclusion that the alcoholics thirst for alcohol isn't really a thirst for alcohol he said he thought it was a low level thirst of the alcoholic's being for unity or if you're more religiously minded he said or maybe a union with god it's to be connected alcoholism's a lonely business and i drank and i've had this experience and I bet you every chronic alcoholic in this room has had this experience where you walk into a party or you walk into a club or a bar and you don't, you're having a bad day. And the people in there, because you walk in sober and they're irritating and they'RE clicky and just, you know, you just look around and you DON'T like any of that stupid clicky people. You know what I mean? Do you ever did have that feeling like you know? But you don'T leave because this is where the alcohol is and then these this contempt this separation this depression this anxiety all these feelings that are on me and the goddamn loneliness of it after about two strong drinks doubles i shake it off me after about four drinks some of those people i didn't like when i walked in there i start thinking they're you know they're really not bad people you know after about six drinks we're shooting pool together after about eight drinks we'RE PLANNING OUR VACATIONS TOGETHER you know AFTER ABOUT 12 DRINKS I'M SAYING THINGS LIKE I LOVE YOU MAN I'D DIE FOR YOU BRO YOU KNOW LIKE OOH I MEAN CONNECTED NOW THAT'S UNITY That is the thing, and I yearned for that, and I drank for that. I drank because of the loneliness and separation of untreated alcoholism, and alcohol was a very, very effective medicine for that So if that's true, and here I am I'm 25 years sober, 20 years sober. I've been through the steps five or six times, and yet I still have those feelings of disconnection i still have the feelings that something ain't right i'm getting in trouble with people my personal relationships are crap i can't the bedevilments on page 52 are still kind of true for me you know problem with personal relationships a feeling of unhappiness full of fear i'm a worrier and i ain't write then you know if you're like me and you're a big book guy and i was a big book guy you know you say you go back through the work again then back to the working and i started thinking man there's something missing here and there was a guy in aa when i was new he said something that stuck with me and he said that the highest set of spiritual principles and alcoholics anonymous was one practice personally in your life was the original set of the 12 traditions because what are why do why do the traditions exist they exist because of a lack of unity they exist just like step one takes a guy who's powerless and can't manage his own life and brings now it brings a higher power into his life and a new manager and the first tradition is that our common welfare, what's that mean? That means everybody except your last. And that's hard for a selfish person to put the group, to put your family, to put you in a group, to put everybody else before you in order to feel like the first you have to be the last. that they have to come first. And personal recovery, this is me now, that my personal recovery depends upon AA unity. Well, what does that mean? You ever watch people in your home group leave AA and eventually drink? Some of them die. How do they leave? How do many of them leave? Through a lot of inaction, primarily. That's a big piece of it. but some guys leave AA one judgment and one opinion at a time you know they don't even know they're leaving it just seems like all of a sudden the quality of people in AA sure has gone down a lot you go to meetings and you there's some but some people share it on some topic and you realize you're the only one in the room that knows about it you know but they and they don't call on you which is an offense and you just all of a sudden the separation starts again you know i had a friend that uh left a not too long ago can't get back it's it's really uh it's a very sad thing i've tried desperately to work with guys that have been sober 20 years 30 years that drink again my god the progression of the illness is it's staggering very few people get back what why is what's the what progresses the most is it the physical stuff you get sicker quicker yeah maybe your financial situation you burn through your money quicker yeah may be but i think the thing that kills us it's the progression of the ego whereas at one time they could surrender they can't surrender now at one time they were willing to to become humble enough and small enough that they could be sponsored you can't sponsor i've tried to sponsor some of these guys they become the i know everything guys i think i said often i was talking to this one guy and he's he drank after 20 some years and i'm he's not listening to me he wants to just talk over what i'm saying i finally had to yell and stop it listen to me and i start telling things i want him to do as his sponsor and he goes yeah yeah i know uh-huh yeah i really thought he was really saying out here he's saying yeah i know in here he said shut up go away because he does he can't listen to be and he can follow my directions because he's too full of himself and that's what had progressed the ego the ego i remember chuck chamberlain saying one time if it wasn't for the ego we wouldn't even need aa it's the it'sthe chronic nature of the sickness and the psychiatrist who worked with bill wilson and marty mann and he was on our board he spoke at one of the internationals was a guy named Harry Thiebaud and Harry Thibaud said two things that to me really hit home he talked about we must have ego reduction at depth and then he said even if you do there's this amazing recuperative ability of the alcoholic ego it grows back like a bad tumor and that's what's baffling to guys like me who felt and believed they were spiritually connected and now the ego is a shift changer now i i think i'm i fancy i'm still spiritual i fancy I'm still surrendered uh but I'm not i remember uh it's embarrassing to tell this story but it's true i i went to a i became so full of myself and so opinionated and i and i don't even know that you know one of the lines in our book that i think is it's funny and yet true wilson says that the alcoholic is an extreme extreme example of self-will run riot though he usually doesn't think so I never think you catch a guy like me in the middle of a self-will run riot binge try obsessed with getting his own way getting what he wants defending and protecting what he already has you get catch a guy like that and ask me in the middle of it Robert you think right now maybe you could possibly be an extreme example of self-willed run riot no I'm doing this is the I need to do this stuff it never looks that way to me and yet wilson says something that's so true he says we're not just a we don't have a problem with self we have an extreme problem with it we're self-centered on steroids you know how you if you ever spend any time if you have any family members that aren't alcoholic my daughter is not an alcoholic and i'll get it truly she's one of the most emotionally well-balanced people selfless she started a charity through her she's a through her position with the bank i mean she's just amazing she has this moral compass that she's never never deviated from it never i i used to we used to have a dotty daddy daughter date night We'd go to dinner and a movie every week. When I turned 60, you can get the discounted tickets. Well, I'm going to the movie one night, and I got two tickets. I said, here, Kate, here's your ticket, and I've got mine. She looked at it. She said, no, Dad, that's your ticker. I said what do you mean? No, it's your ticke. She said but it says senior on it. Well, they both say senior. Dad, you cant do that. I had to go and pay the difference. I was humiliated. I was like, I threw my morals out the window for a dollar and a quarter, for God's sakes. I mean, this is pathetic. But see, it would never concern her to do that. She wouldn't do it. She just wouldn't doing it. She always does the right thing. When she, she's giving me my first grandson, who's just, he's one of the handsomest kids you'd ever seen. And if I showed you a picture of him, he looks just like me. He does too. When before she met her husband, she was dating, she dated a couple people that I didn't really care for. I like her husband a lot. And she was date this one guy and I, I just want to, she likes him, I like him, you know. I don't want to get into that. I just want what's best for her. I think the guy's a player. I think he's going to hurt her, but I keep my mouth shut because you taught me that, just to be of service without opinion. And I just did that. Well, he cheated on her, broke her heart. I'm meeting her for dinner one night, and she's upset. and i sit down in this booth in this restaurant with her and i said kate she starts telling me about it and i i don't i love my daughter but i don' t sometimes that you don't know how to respond to things you know like i missed the parenting the parenting class somewhere along the way you know what i so i'm like ad libbing i don'T know what to i'M SAYING WEIRD STUFF THAT'S THE MINUTE I SAY IT I THINK IT'S STUPID LIKE I GUESS YOU GOT TO KISS A LOT OF FROGS BEFORE YOU MEET YOUR PRINCE I'm saying weird stuff, because I care about her. So she goes home that night. I go home. We're planning on meeting about almost a week later in the same restaurant. So I get to the restaurant. She's already sitting in the booth. I slide into the booth because I'm concerned. I want to be there for her. I want her to be her dad. And I slide across from her. I said, Kate, how's it going? She goes, oh, it's good, Dad. I thought, oh, she's so brave. I said, no, you know Kate with the breakup and everything. She said, well, you can't hold on to that stuff. You've got to move on. Actually, I'm going to go out to dinner with a guy next week. You can't holding on to it. You can hold on that stuff, and I'm looking at her, and I am thinking about how I took five or six meetings hostage during relationship breakups. How I made my sponsor's eyes glaze over. You know, how I would milk it. I said to her, Kate, you couldn't possibly have got enough mileage out of that yet. But see, she's not an extreme example of self-over and riot. She won't take stuff with the obsessiveness that I will. She feels the feelings. She moves on. that is a level of mental health beyond anything most of us will ever know, right? But that's because I'm an extreme example of self-will run riot. And I don't like to let go and I don' t let go easily. And so Alcoholics Anonymous gets a hold of a guy like me and he started getting me to take actions that ran contrary to everything I ever felt or believed in. Some of the crazy stuff in A doesn't make sense. You know, it's like you call your sponsor up and you're having a bad day and you just, oh my God, I'm just, everything's terrible today. And he says, leave me at the detox. But there's nobody down there that could help me. Me, me, me. me and you're saying them them right and i go and do it and what happens i come out the back side of that meeting after spending 20 minutes after the meeting talking to some guys and i it's a game changer for me because at the core there's only the problem is the separation and at the core of the separation and the trouble is selfishness and self-centeredness and i my very life depends upon me taking actions regularly that will temporarily relieve me of the bondage of self very much like whiskey you know it's it's funny you know guys do a 12-step call here and there i think oh good i'm done i did that i never thought that when i was drinking i the next day i never thought why doesn't why am i why doesn'T the bottle of whiskey i drank last night last forever i always knew i had to re-up i always Knew that because the the relief the ease and comfort and the feeling of freedom that i got last night has worn off and i always do that i never argued with her i always know how to go get more and that's the way Alcoholics Anonymous is it's a treatment and the book says is it a substitute? Yes, it's vastly more than that it's an treatment for alcoholism it's treatment for the one problem and I only have one and it's the bondage of self and that is it's so independent you know you'll see something every once in a while on Alcoholics Anonymous that at first glance seems baffling and that's somebody that's worth 100 million dollars that commits suicide or someone who has everything you'd ever want and they kill themselves and what's that about well no matter how good we get it out here if it ain't no good in here it ain't no good i went to a meeting we have a club in las vegas that's in the middle of pretty affluent part of vegas in the parking lot there's a lot of there's porsches and there's bmws and mercedes there's occasional bentley in there um all kind of suburban people and million dollar homes you know that kind of stuff at the a meeting i don't like going over there and the because the meetings feel bad to me because these really well-to-do people are very whiny and very depressed and just kind of you know they just probably it's one of those meetings that starts out does anybody have a problem and everybody all problem no solution and i i was sponsoring a guy in southern california who had a panel up in morrow bay it uh one of the what's that the sort of maximum security central coastal yeah yeah yeah he had a panel up there and he said i want you to come up with me and be one of those speak to speak there i said yes so it's quite a ride up from la we get up there and his he knows everybody because he goes there once a month and he's introducing me all these guys and these guys are lit up this is the spirit in this prison meeting is amazing and he's telling me introduce me people and then he's telling me on the side that guy's got two life sentences he'll never get out this guy's Got a Life Sentence see that guy back on the wall with the big book and that talking to that new guy he's a new fish on the yard he's sponsored him he's taking it through the doctor's opinion and they're laughing and they've been there for the and I was watching all this and I thought to myself my God, these people are freer who will never get out of prison than those idiots that had the big cars and the big houses at that meeting I was at earlier this week because there's only one freedom and it contains all freedoms the freedom from the bondage of self and if a guy like me doesn't take the actions to accomplish that then I got nothing I could be the guy who could like that guy in Malibu who committed suicide in the middle of a 15 million dollar house on the beach I could do that because if you don't have that freedom you got nothing well I can feel the attention span of people waning do you have any announcements anybody should we close with a prayer or just, why don't we close with the Lord's Prayer 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. Thank you.