The Phenomenon of Craving – Big Book Is Alive Workshop – Part 5 of 7 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, everybody. I'm a recovered alcoholic. My name is Mike Chase. And I'm also a recovered alcoholics. My name is Joe. So our spiritual duty is to put newcomers hands in God's hand as quickly as possible. We found this to be the most effective by doing our part to try and make the big book come alive. As a disclaimer we're not experts. We're just a couple of recovered alcohols who love the big-book. However, we have made our utmost spiritual errands and become as familiar with the history and the facts as we can so that we can transmit the pure message of God to the next untreated alcoholic. In other words, if you see us look up and begin to talk, it means that we're sharing about an observation or an experience, and please feel free to for what we do up here encourages you to investigate the history of AA, then we're certainly doing our job. If you see us look down and reading, it mean that we are reading from what we believe to be the divine solution from alcoholism. Unless Joe wrote a script, and then it's from that. Some helpful information has already been given in the form of those who are not accustomed with workshop-style study. We hope to educate, challenge, invigorate your current experience with God and to help you to come out of this as a more effective sponsor to carry the information in the book that alcoholic you're working with. Tonight we hope to cover some information in Bill's story, but we'd like to thank the group for giving us spiritual consent to allow God to lead us. Which means we're going to go as far as we can go today. Who doesn't have a highlight? We've got some guys. Does anybody want to highlight or underline who doesn't have one currently? Good, because we're going to be having group participation here tonight. Whenever we're moved to study the Big Book, we usually go into it with a brief meditation in order to clear our minds and help connect to God for the process. So please join us in a brief two-minute meditation before we start our study here. Actually, usual is we always. Yeah, thanks. I'll just help if I just talk louder. so what that means is it's going to give us about two minutes of quiet time for you to get reconnected from god if you're like me you've had a crazy hectic day and it's going to be a nice opportunity to calm and just let the craziness of the day and get a nice connection with god so we can be focused in this next hour of studying are we ready take breathing concentrate on your posture for the guys who aren't currently involved in meditation it's gonna seem like a lifetime to get used to it it's a great opportunity and just chill out for a minute, I guess is another way to put it. I'll see you guys in two minutes. You ready? All set? Good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you guys want to pray along God let me lay aside everything I think I know about the big book 12 steps AA my disease and you God for an open mind and a new experience let's get to work ready sounds good let's go so two weeks ago we started off in the first edition which was the introduction to the world of a program of recovery that we had stumbled on accidentally the forward to the second edition was our 16 year update did we succeed or did we fall flat on our face well we succeeded three alcoholics, two groups to 160,000 recovered alcoholics and 6,000 groups in a 16 year time span when they had the big book one recovered alcoholic working with an unrecovered alcoholic and dependence and reliance upon God were the three important factors and we were just incredibly successful in that forward to third, forward to second and talk about how the general service tried to make the book more modern to the stories in the back. I didn't touch the first original 164 pages. Last week we touched on it. We spent actually the whole hour talking on the doctor's opinion. You know, the first sort of gave the impression that these erstwhile fanatical alcoholics are out there trying to get a bunch of people sober. The doctor's Opinion explains why we are in such a bad way because it's a malady of fatality. It's not an inconvenience, not a little problem. It's a disease that's going to kill us and we stumbled across the solution. So if we are the ones that can bring the solution to other people, you can understand why we make a big deal out of it, why this is the first, why this was the most important part of my life is working with newcomers. So the doctor's opinion touched on a few things, Joe. Yeah, the doctor'S opinion, we got the definition of the problem. We got it from Dr. Silkworth who was a specialist as far as alcoholism goes. He's worked with about 40,000 alcoholics like us throughout the course of his career, and he seemed to notice that there was something more going on than just what was present in the mind, that these people were obviously suffering from something within the body. So he, and in fact as he describes, he says that we were not drinking to escape, we were drinking to overcome a craving beyond our mental control, which is exactly what it felt like for me. So already we've got definition of the problem, we know what's wrong with us, we can use this in our stories to try and relate to another alcoholic and bring them into the solution. Which is mentioned on the very first page. In the course of Bill's third treatment, he acquired certain ideas concerning possible means of recovery. As part of his rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conception to other alcoholics. That was the Oxford group practice back then. Impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. Once you get the recovery in you to stay recovered, you have to bring this to other untreated alcoholics That became the basis of his rapidly growing fellowship. Some great information there. Now we're going to jump into Bill's story. You want to start off with this one? Tee it up a little bit. By the way, Bill's story is a classic 12-step call. Somebody mentioned to me the main purpose of a 12-steps call. The main end purpose of the 12-stepper call is to give the guy some hope. Let him find out what disease he has and understand it. But when you leave them that they've got some hope that they can maybe go home and pray and wake up the next morning and be excited about getting involved in this program. And we learned that this book is essentially a teacher's aid tool, like a textbook style, in order to transmit knowledge from one person to another, teacher to student. What Bill really does is he gives us information, and then he gives us examples of that information. So Bill's story we're going to get to see everything in the doctor's opinion played out for the course of his drinking career and his attempts to get sober. What we do is when we go through Bill's story, we try and identify the progression that Bill suffers from as he goes through his trials and tribulations. And they had to have an alcoholic story at the beginning of the book so that we could get that immediate relation. and in fact Bill had no success whatsoever until he started to tell his story to other alcoholics so we get the importance of why we need this information first and foremost Who wants to read the dictionary people tonight? Two people I got five Anybody else got one more? You know when the book first came out so when the alcoholic who's living in broken tongue New Mexico who's been given this book by some loving person that knows that he's having a problem and here's the solution right he turns to page one and there's the doctor's opinion you know factual information he can take somewhere between a few printings that sort of got split into the forwards and if you're like me you don't really read the forwards thank goodness we've got sponsors who are awakened who know better who can start us in the forwards because if I got this book and I turned to page one and it was like Warfeeper ran high in the New England I would be nodding off putting I'm not even a heroin addict I'd be nodding off putting the I'm putting the book off to the side, you know, but we're awakened. So we know what the problem is. Now we're going to be able to identify with Bill's story. So it makes sense to read it this way. War fever ran high in the New England towns in which these young officers from Plattsburgh were assigned. They were flattered when the first citizens took us in their homes. Highlight, yellow. Making us feel heroic? Heroic. I can't say that word. Here was love, applause, war, moments sublime, intervals hilarious. I was part of life at last and in the midst of it, the excitement, I discovered liquor. Till his dying day, he's always going to remember that alcohol brought him that feeling of importance. I don't know when I first had that first drunk from that, I always went back to that one. So this is stamped in his brain that booze was going to be his solution. And Bill had a really rough life up to this point. His first love died tragically. He had always been wanting to be number one in everything he did, and he was a real troubled kid. So we get that for Bill, alcohol was social, engaging, and fun when he first had it. And then it goes on to say, I was part of life at last, and in the midst of the excitement, I discovered liquor. I forgot the strong warnings and the prejudices of my people concerning drink. In time, we sailed for over there. I was very lonely and again turned to alcohol. So imagine it works on both ends of the spectrum, whether you're having a good time or also it can be there to comfort you. Alcohol was our solution and it fixed everything within us that we were suffering from. All of a sudden, we were not aware of anything that we drank for. Thanks. You know, Bill was on this troop ship with about a thousand other guys going out for World War One. And there's a good chance that Bill W is probably going to die. So he's not in the curious amusements of this troop ship and they're passing some booze around you know once again he's gone to that solution we landed in england i visited winchester cathedral much moved i wandered outside my attention was caught by a dog roll on an old tombstone here lies a hampshire grenadier who caught his death drinking cold small beer a good soldier near forgot whether he died by musket or by pot ironically he had gone to the church with his guys and he was moved by it but if you go into the history more, he was actually sneaking out the back door of the church to try and find a pub which is when he happened to come across this tombstone which I have a copy of the second one, the original one somewhere got destroyed in 1966 they replaced it with one that's similar the guy's name on that was Theatcher it's not truly Thatcher like every Thatcher but it was a Thatcher type name and Bill remembers seeing that thinking about the Thatcher boys that he grew up with so what a powerful message that Bill gets this and he says that a good soldier has never forgot whether he dies by musket or by pot if he's dying in battle then that's all well as good as dying on a bar stool and he really embraces that when he was writing this he goes on to say ominous warning which i failed to heed and here ominous means threatening looking back with hindsight mom went to me one day when i had become about 18 and she realized i had started drinking and she looked me straight in the face with her little finger and says you know uncle rudolph's alcoholic you better be careful. How would you be careful? What? I was really confused about that. That was my ominous warning, which I sort of failed to heed at the time. Twenty-two, in a veteran of foreign wars, I went home and laughed. I fancied myself a leader. For not the men of my battery had given us a special token of appreciation, my talent for leadership I imagined would place us in the head of fast enterprises, which i would manage with the utmost assurance, bills get reinforced for his leadership, his number one-ism, and his ego is starting to get built. In this next page, we're going to pick up on what things sort of motivated Bill. What was the core belief system that Bill W. had? I took a night law course and obtained employment as an investigator for a surety company. The drive for success was on. I proved to the world I was important. My work took me about Wall Street, and little by little I became interested in the market. Many people lost money, but some became very rich. Why not I? I studied economics and business as well as law. Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course. At one of the finals, I was too drunk to think or write. Though my drinking was not yet continuous, it disturbed my wife. So this is a guy who is actually functional, successful. he's taking a lost lock horse he's probably the party guy he's showing up drinking too much like many of us were he hasn't really reached the stages of real hardcore alcoholism yet but he's starting to get his important things like greed having people think he's fantastic that number one driver that he had in high school is now taking place in college though my drinking was not yet continuous it disturbed my wife this is where we find out bill's real ability to like bill was a stockbroker but he really was sort of manipulator they say that was able to he was a fast talker to slow-minded people so he was ableto get people to sign on the deals that really went all that good in the beginning we had long talks when i would steal her forebodings by telling her that and who's had this conversation men of genius conceive their best projects when drunk that the most majestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived. Oh, dear. Yeah, she just felt that I was not talking to her like that. But what we're trying to point out here, this is also an introduction to the world of what an alcoholic is. And a lot of people assume that the alcoholic was the guy who's under the bridge, has never amounted to anything, was a drunk from day one, and was going to die from. We're sort of playing a different picture for the world than for those of us that were successful. We start off with people that when we set our mind to something, we accomplish it, a lot of us and there's a lot that don't but this is just trying to get rid of some of the stereotypes that they had at the time I'm sorry by the time I had completed the course I knew the law was not for me the inviting maelstrom of Wall Street had me in its grip business and financial leaders were my heroes out of this alloy of drink and speculation I commenced to forge the weapon that would one day turn in its flight like a boomerang and all but cut me to ribbons I was, my first time I got in rehab, I was 23 years old. I was a circuit bartender and I was like a distributor of stuff too. And that's when I arrived. You know, I wasn't invited to all the great parties. I was the toast of the town. It was fantastic. You know. That's what made me who I was because that was what I aspired to be. It was like this really successful cocktail kind of guy. Just like the stuff that made me. That's the stuff for me. The stuff that tore me down at the end. You know? It also just switched on me and ripped me to shreds. living modestly my wife and i saved a thousand dollars one thousand dollars in the 1920s that is a lot of money we're talking maybe ten fifteen thousand dollars today's money perhaps maybe a little bit more once again this is a guy who sets his mind to something as capable of following through he's not a complete slacker that's what we're trying to go the impression here it went into certain securities then cheap and rather unpopular i rightly imagined that they would someday have a great rise. I failed to persuade my broker friends to send me out looking over factories and managements, but my wife and I decided to go anyway. What was going on? You want to take that one? Yeah, absolutely. Bill thinks that there's too much speculation going on in the business area, but he's driven. He goes to his employers and he says why don't I do some investigation and research and find out a little bit of information about these places that we're investing in? And they said yeah, that's not really necessary, but I'm going to go and do this anyway. So he was driven at this point in time, and he had a clear-cut idea of what he wanted to achieve, all in the name of fortune and fame. And he was fighting a lot of standard business practices at that time. Basically, the guy with the money would go invest in four electrical companies. It'd be Fred's Electric, General Electric, Westinghouse and Bob's Electric. They'd lose money on the Fred and Bob Electric who made money on General Electric and Westinghaus. To them, that was standard operating procedure. We lose some money, we make some money. Bill's like, hey, the money you lost there, I'd be glad to keep myself. So he just said, I'm going to follow through with my dream which was to change the industry. So what did he do? I developed a theory that most people lost money in stocks through ignorance of markets. I discovered many more reasons later on. We gave up our positions and off we roared on a motorcycle. The side car stuffed with a tent, blankets, a change of clothes, and three huge volumes of financial reference services. our friend's thought a lunacy commission should be appointed perhaps they were right I can imagine the conversation he's having with Lois listen Lois for the next year we're going to get on a motorcycle we're gonna live out of a tent you're gonna sit at the tent at night I'm gonna go and talk to people and Lois is like oh fun I'm going you know he's going no we're gunna be living in a tent she's like I know we're doing no we are living in the tent and she still went I had some success in speculation so we had a little money. But we once worked on a farm for a month to avoid drawing on our small capital. How many people went out to the bars or on a vacation and said, I'm only spending $400 on this vacation? And how much did you end up spending on the rest of the vacation? $800, $900, it's only credit. This is a guy who was capable to set his mind on a particular goal and stick to it. He said, I'm spending $500 on this venture and when he got close to $500 he put Lois to work at a farm. Let's make some money. Which was a big thing in those days. That typically didn't happen that way around, so. We covered the whole eastern United States in a year. At the end of it, my reports to Wall Street procured me a position there and a use of a large expense account. So what Bill was doing, he was going to these factories in the daytime, all dressed up, talking to business guys, the managers, the presidents, getting the dirt of what the business meant. And then later night, he'd go to the bar across the street from the factory and get information on what's really going on from the faculty workers. So Bill really knew what he was doing, plus he was able to hang out and drink. The exercise of an option brought in more money, leaving us with a profit of several thousand dollars for that year. For the next few years, fortune through money and applause my way, I had arrived. Good luck telling Bill W., you're drinking too much. It's like that's what was making him successful. It was working hand in hand. He was basically firing all 12 cylinders, drinking, conversation, manipulation. this was his he was doing great wall street saw the evidence of what bill had been up to in his investigations and they said actually you're onto something here so he uh fortunately was able to produce that for his employment the great boom of the 20s and seeding the swelling drink was taking an important exhilarating life part of my life there was large talk loud talk in the jazz places uptown everyone spent in thousands and chattered in millions scoffers could scoff and be damned. I made a host of fair weather friends. Anyone have any of those fair weather friends? I'm moving this Saturday. Can some of you people help me? Good luck with your drinking buddies, right? And here we're going to get to another level of progression. Bill writes, my drinking assumed more serious proportions continuing all day and almost every night. The remonstrances of my friends terminated in a row and I became a lone wolf. See, he wasn't thirsty, the phenomenon was starting to kick in and he had lost his control to decide if he had enough. He had lost the control whether he was going to start. He started being that guy that wasn't being invited to people's houses. He was the guy who was starting to be left out of business deals because he was inappropriately behaving. Bill was a rowdy drunk. The word row in English terms means argument, which leads to fisticuffs, which Bill used to fight like that. Bill would get drunk and fight with people. There were many unhappy scenes in our sumptuous apartment. There had been no real infidelity, for loyalty to my wife, helped at times by extreme drunkenness, kept me out of those straits. I was told that if you read the book Lois Remembrance, you'll find a different story. But we're not trying to discredit Bill W. in this book. What we're trying to show is that we put ourselves in positions that we shouldn't be due to alcohol. He probably just got himself in straits that he probably might not have so much sober. But Gulf permits drinking, so in 1929, I contracted Gulf fever. And face it, we're alcoholics. He's rich. He's the golden boy. This guy's got a lot of money. He's living in Park Avenue lifestyle. He's got limos. He's flying around in airplanes with Eddie Thatcher. That was like this guy was born. Let's go be Walter Hagen, all right? We went at once to the country, my wife to applaud while I started out to overtake Walter Hagan back in the woods of those days. But liquor caught up with me much faster than I came up behind Walter. You want to underline and highlight that one. Liquor caught up pretty much faster than I cam up behind Walther, Hague, and Walter, whatever his name is. He's not being held accountable by business. He's just got a steady stream of money. He just goes to the bank whenever he needs money. Lois has no control over him whatsoever. His ego's out of control. It's like, I'm going to go become the number one golfer. The alcoholism delusion is starting to kick in other aspects of his life. Progression, withdrawal. Who's that? I began to be jittery in the morning. Golf permitted drinking every day and every night. Same as bartending? I can imagine. Any other jobs you can think of waiting at TGI Fridays? That's one of them, for the record. Absolutely. It was fun to corral around the exclusive course, which inspired such awe in me as a lad. I inquired the impeccable code of TAN once he's upon the well-to-do and homeless the local banker watched me whirl fat checks in and out of his till with amused skepticism so imagine you know this Bill's got you know the rumor, this is the guy in the golf circuit who's a drunk, you know, and he's coming in there staggering writing off checks, going through his money doesn't bother the banker at all but he can see it writing on the wall this guy's just lost it okay, so here's the deal Bill's Got The Well To Do I guess the 1% lifestyle anything he wants, money's there he's living on paper millions, he's just living off the success of the stock market and I love how he says this abruptly in October 1929 we're going to start discussing his version of his first jackpot and if you don't know what a jackpot is a jackot is something in life that's fantastic or something that's completely horrible but your normal life goes either up or down So this is what's going to happen. Abruptly in 1929, hell broke loose on the New York Stock Exchange. After one of those days of inferno, I wobbled from the hotel bar to the brokerage office. It was at 8 o'clock. Five hours after the market closed, the ticker still clattered. You guys know what the tickers are? Those little machines that spit out tape that tell you what the stock market values are. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. At minus 32, he's not in good position. No. I can't say that, can I? Well played. Thank you. It had been positive 52 that morning. I was finished and so were many friends. The papers reported men jumping to death from the towers of high finance. That disgusted me. I would not jump. The reason they were jumping is because they saw the writing on the wall. Bill was an alcoholic and delusious. Every time I went to go kill myself, which there were a few times back in those days, The drink would kick in and the phenomenon of craving kicked in and my delusions, I wasn't going to be able to get through it, was kicking in. The sober businessmen of the day who saw that their lives were ruined and everything they have is gone, a lot of them just saw the right-hand wall and jumped out the window. Thank God for alcoholism because I'm here today because of it. Otherwise, I might not be here. Yeah, drink was still doing a great deal for him because it precluded him from following through with some of that ideation. He says, I went back to the bar. My friends had dropped several million since 10 o'clock. So what? So what tomorrow was another day as I drank the old fierce determination to win came back. So that's quite a jackpot. One day, multimillionaire type guy with the lifestyle of the rich and famous next day. Well, not so good. Matter of fact, this is where Bill W has his first actual geographic. Next morning, I tell a friend in Montreal he had plenty of money left and thought I'd better go to Canada by the following spring. we were living by our custom style I felt like Napoleon returning from Elba no St. Helena for me but drinking caught up with me again surprise and my generous friend had to let me go this time we stayed broke I love how he says let me know opportunity um and again the bottle removes it from him because he says that my friend had to let me go I get a feeling he's probably pushed out the door for inappropriate behavior because I would have been pushed out the door in those circumstances so Now, Bill W., man of town, lots of money, right? All of a sudden, where does he end up? We went to live on my wife's parents. What an embarrassment, you know. I found a job, then lost it as the result of a brawl with a taxi driver. Mercifully, no one could guess that I was to have no real employment for five years or hardly draw a sober breath. So we're getting set up for what Bill's life is like. not working, drinking himself every day. Lois, who's like, oh, Bill, working to keep him drinking. My wife began to work in a department store, coming home exhausted to find me drunk. I became an unwelcome hanger-on at brokerage places. So he was showing up at the department store almost getting her fired numerous occasions. And then he's showing up drunk, you know, at the brokerages trying to get business and develop. It's like Bill, go away. Highlight underlined. When liquor ceased to be a luxury, it became a necessity. Right now he has to drink. There is no choice involved and he's always got liquor in his system so the phenomenon of craving is always present. And if he can't get it, you guys who are nodders, you have that dope sick that you talk about, you know? We have our own version of dope sick. It's called the DTs, it's called The Shakes, it' s called The Jitters. It's like you wake up in the morning, you wake from a deep sleep, It's like the body's screaming at you, get me some of that stuff inside here. I'm going to misbehave. Bottle tub gin, which was a high proof, two bottles a day and often three, got to be routine. Sometimes a small deal would net a few hundred dollars, and I would pay my bills at the bars in Delicatessen. Sound familiar? I would get a paycheck, and I Would go visit Mr. Him and then go to the bars, and the electric bill was secondary. The water bill is I could always borrow water from the neighbor. Car insurance, like that was not a necessity anymore. Sometimes a small deal, but then a few hundred dollars. There's no thought of helping Lois with the rent. There's not thought of contributing. It's just full-blown alcoholism, 24-7 phenomenon of craving. Got to drink, got to drink. Got to think, got a drink. This went on endlessly and I began to awaken very early in the morning shaking violently. Ironically, a tumbler full of gin followed by half a dozen bottles of beer would be required if I were to eat any breakfast. Ironically. Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation. That's that mental obsession we talk about. At the great obsession of every alcoholic is that we can drink like other people. The great obsession with me was like I could live like other People. I could get through a few hours. But he's not waking up in the morning because he loves the taste of that bathtub gin. The phenomenon of cravings waking him up from a pass out. You know, just boom, wake up, get more. His mind immediately started doing whatever he had to do to get what he had the gift. He can't see the truth from the false at this stage. The truth of the situation is that he's shaking violently and he has to neck liquor in order to eat anything. But he's telling himself, I still think I can control the situation. And there were periods of sobriety, which we're going to call abstinence, which renewed my wife's hopes. Yeah. Nevertheless, I feel like I control the situations. and there appears that sobriety was to renew my wife's hope. It's dry, and she was just living in a fantasy land because he was just waiting for that. I know for myself, if my family came to town and I had to behave for a weekend, it was pure hell, but I knew that on Monday after they leave, I've got a couple of jugs of tequila and some other stuff waiting for me, so I would just fake the flu or fake the cold or my allergies or just misery, and it wasn't sobriete. Matter of fact, I've Got This Little Thing on Today. The word sober means to have a perspective that is not distorted out of focus. It's characterized by reason, sanity, self-control, and the state of being emotionally balanced. To be vigilant is to be watching, especially watching your step, so that each step is firm and well placed. Sobriety and vigilance is proceeding in wakeful state. It's a continual action of staying watchful and alert to danger or trouble, not in an anxious way but in a way that is securely focused i.e. connected to God abstinence the word abstinance means self-denial temperance continence these nouns refer to restraint of one's appetite or desires abstinense applies to willful avoidance of pleasures especially of food and drink thought to be harmful or self-indulgent he wasn't sober in those moments I wasn't so sober because I was just dry I was miserable get me a drink mom go home gradually things got worse the house was taken over by the mortgage holder my mother-in-law died and my wife and father-in law became ill it snowballed the fact that he's got the allergic reaction and the unmanageability of the alcohol around him the reality of his lifestyle being a drunk is building up he's living on his parents couch not good then I got a promising business opportunity stocks were at a low point 1939 I had somehow formed a group to buy. What basically happened, a bunch of guys got together and Bill was the rain man. Bill was in deal closure. Bill could take a difficult deal when he was behaving and closed the deal. They came to Bill and they said, listen Bill, we're going to put this deal together but if you pick up and go on one of your drunks again, you're out of the deal as a matter of fact, we're gonna write in this contract. You get drunk and pull your shenanigans, you don't get your cut of the big money. So the night before they're going to sign this contract, Bill's hanging out with some other guys with another deal, and they're passing this jug around. And Bill's like, I'm not drinking, you know. He's sitting off to his side, and he's passing this mug around again. And one of the guys looks at Bill and says, Bill, this just ain't any kind of moonshine. This is the best Apple Jacks you're ever going to have. As a matter of fact, this is called Jersey Lightning. And Bill, his eyes just sort of picked up, they say. And he goes, I'll take a cup of that, just a little taste. Bill wasn't there the next morning he missed out on another financial it wasn't because he was scared of success or completion phenomenonic craving kicked in for Bill W and by the way Applejack that stuff is high potent alcohol so we're talking instant allergic reaction boom kicked in he's off to the races then I went on a prodigious bender and that Sean finished I woke up this had to be stopped I saw I could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever. Oh, finally some knowledge you can not drink it, honey. Before then, I'd written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed that this time I meant business, and so I did. Every time I promised somebody I wasn't going to drink was bigger and better than the last promise I was making. Well, this time it's different. This time it was different. He's lost complete control. If you were to give that guy a lie detector in the morning and say, are you going to get drunk tonight, Bill? He would pass it 100%. A couple hours later, he's getting tanked. He doesn't understand where it came from. He had lost the power to choose at this point in time and all aspects of alcohol, whether it's in him or it's not in him. But he actually didn't even have a go many times where it wasn't in him The guys on the street corner, they don't have Lois bankrolling and drinking. So they're always just living in a house, drinking themselves every day. Shortly afterward, I came home drunk. And now, I don't know what the period of time was, but in the book, it's one sentence. So there's how that sweet promise lasted. Again, he came home drunk, right? There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn't know. It hadn't even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that. He's starting to slip in that and say, he's not going to call us insane at this time in the book, But he's going to start alluding that our behavior is crazy and we're going to cheat a little bit. I always do this with my guys. We're goingto go to page 24. See, Bill's trying to figure out why it is with all his fears, with all of his nods, why can't he not drink? It's like don't drink between meetings. Why that doesn't work for an alcoholic. So if we'regoing to go topage 24, which is so cool about knowing the book, we can pop around a littlebit and give oursponsees a little information. The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice and drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable at certain times to bring into consciousness with sufficient force the memory of suffering and humiliation of a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. So Bill is fighting a losing battle, but he doesn't even know it. he just thinks it's some behavioral problem or he kept blaming it on the depression he keeps blaming it on Lois' nagging and stuff like that luckily we can see what's going on here and it's not a pretty road that is going down right now so this time is going to be different renewing my resolve I tried again some time passed and confidence began to replace by cocksureness in other words ego I couldn't laugh at the gin mills Now I have what it takes. One day, I walked into a cafe to telephone. In no time, I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whiskey rose to my head, I told myself I would manage better next time, but I might as well get good and drunk then, and I did. Yeah, highlight that. I told oneself I would mange better next term, which is the phenomenon of craving causing your brain to think crazy talk, but I may as well be good and drunken then because it's probably going to be my last drunk, right? And I did it. I can relate to that so many times. I had one drink and I thought I had made a decision. You know, I'm not going to drink, I might have half the drink and then all of a sudden the booze is in me and it's like, I'll take a couple shots. As a matter of fact, I am not coming home tonight, you know. I always thought that was a rational state of mind decision that I made. It wasn't until later on that I found that that's actually the phenomenon of craving causing all rational decisions to go out the door and all I had in my mind was got to drink. Got to drink Got to Drink got a drink the remorse horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable the courage to do battle was not there my brain raced uncontrollably and there was a terrible sense of impending calamity let's look at some of the words involved here when you're working with guys or gals and you mention these words if you don't get that little look of like yeah i relate um you might want to underline or highlight these remorse horror hopelessness unforgettable courage my brain raised uncontrollably sense of impending calamity if you honestly can't look back to pre-recovery and relate to those situations you know i was a i can look at that i can figure out many times I'm just sitting there and that was my... See, the financial bottoms didn't bother Bill. The social bottoms apparently didn't bother Bill, but this is where Bill's finally just sensing that something's bad here and he's feeling it. There's no lying about it anymore. This is his first emotional, real emotional bottom that he mentions here. And the language is getting very definite around this tragic event. Usually in the book we find that the language does get a little bit flowery and specific when He's talking about something important. And it's actually leading up to his first detox, which isn't mentioned in the book, but he's going to be detoxed pretty darn soon. I hardly dared cross the street lest I collapse and be run down by an early morning truck for it was scarcely daylight. An all-night place supplied me with a dozen glasses of ale. My writhing nerves were still at last. A morning paper told me the market had gone to hell again. Well, so had I. The market would recover, but I wouldn't. That was a hard thought. Should I kill myself? No, not now. Then a mental fog settled down. Gin would fix that. So two bottles and oblivion. Bill is now essentially drinking for the oblivion This is another level of progression where there's no mid-ground and he just wants completely to check out. He's drinking for that oblivion He can't live with it and he can't life without it And hopefully you guys are able to relate to some of that drinking habit You know, at the end it wasn't for fun and frolics It was like, I just can't relate. Can't stop. My life sucked. The mind and body are marvelous mechanisms for mine endured this agony two more years. I look at Bill as sort of like the ever-ready alcoholic because he just keeps drinking and drinking and drinkin'. I'm gettin' sober on page three. Now, the first market price I would have been in the rehab helped me, you know? This guy just doesn't get it. He just keeps drinkin', and that little rabbit chuggin' booze. sometimes I stole from my wife's slender purse when the morning terror and madness were on me this was a millionaire this is a self-made man this is the man who was full of pride and ego who's sneaking around like a little lech in the middle of the night digging through that purse that hardly had any money in it you know stealing money to go down and get some drink he had no choice the places that alcoholism takes us but this is just a man who's swirling the drain now sometime in this time period he ends up in the detox they dry him up Then they let him go. Again, I swayed dizzily before an open window or the medicine cabinet where there was poison, cursing myself for a weakling. There were flights from city to country and back as my wife and I saw it escape. Then came the night when the physical and mental torture was so hellish, I feared I would burst through my window, sash and all. It has stopped working. The booze is no longer giving him any relief at all. It's just, he's drinking like a machine. He doesn't get the, it's just continual agony. He's living in the remorse, the restless, the irritable discontent. He's just going to die. And how crazy is this thinking? Somehow I managed to drive my mattress to a lower floor lest I suddenly leap. He remembered those alcoholics, right? But I'm not sure, so I'm going to drag a mattress just in case I decide to, which will soften the fall. Yeah. Put the car in the garage. I did that many times. Now, this is the part where we're going to do a little bit of information about what Bill's going to be doing. Bill had been in the rehab, you know, and now his drink is really out of control. So, a doctor came with a heavy sedative. Next day, found me drinking both gin and sedative, this combination soon landed me on the rocks. People feared for my sanity, so did I. This isn't Bill being a drug addict, you now. This is Bill having his phenomenon of craving being treated by heavy sedatives. This isn't like, well, Bill was a drug addict, so I can talk about being a crack whore. This is, which we hear a lot. We're trying to pound home the power of the phenomenon of craving. This is a guy who cannot not drink. He falls asleep for five or ten minutes, wakes up, and he's out circling the house trying to get more, doing whatever he did. This is just pathetic. This is the only way that they can stop him from going out is to knock him out. So imagine this little doctor pulls up. You know, he gives Bill a little, Bill passes out a little bit. Lois says, oh my God, you know, I can finally sleep. You know Bill can drive me crazy. She probably gives her a couple pills and she goes upstairs and finally sleeps for the first couple days in a week, right? Doctor pops in his little car, putt, putт, puttt, drives away. three or four minutes later Bill's little eyes open up and he's effed up his phenomenon of craving, he's got some heavy sedatives in him but he's up and he'S bouncing around doing what he's gotta do to get this guy's phenomenon of craving is so powerful that heavy sedatives just sort of make him really super loopy in the movie you can see wood bouncing into trees and stuff it's pretty pathetic if you've ever known anybody on an ambient night walk imagine that you know i am passed out it's i've been on a four-day binge you know and all of a sudden i wake up and i'm thirsty you know it's not that i love the taste of beer let's pull the cigarettes out or i love to taste its peel my phenomenon of craving was telling me you get some of that stuff or you're gonna not feel good so even without thinking i do the same thing with phil people fear for my sanity so did i i could eat little or nothing when drinking and i was 40 pounds under weights it was malnourished my brother-in-law is a physician and through his kindness and that of my mother i was placed in a nationally known hospital for the mental and physical rehabilitation of alcoholics so this is bill's second actual visit to a detox the second time to the towns hospital um this time he's actually paying a little bit of attention maybe this is the first time he has ever had conversation with dr townsend according to or Dr. Silke, according to this? Under the so-called Belladonna treatment, which is like a drug cocktail, my brain cleared. Hydrotherapy and mild exercise helped much. Best of all, I met a kind doctor, Dr. Silkworth, who explained that though certainly selfish and foolish, I'd been seriously ill bodily and mentally. So what did he get from the doctor? He got the definition of the problem, what was going on in his body, this phenomenon of craving, that once he puts a drink into him, it offsets this physical craving which is beyond his mental control and he cannot stop. Remember we talked about the modern scientific methods they were using to treat alcoholics? The belladonna is this concoction that just knocks you out. They didn't have the stuff we have today. So they would just knock us out to get us through that phenomenon of a craving case. We learned earlier on that the heavy sedatives, they brought out the big guns with this guy. They just knocked him out. They tied basically that hydrotherapy. They tried to get you naked, tie you to a gurney, and they put you in the shower. And the shower was like hot, cold, hot, cool for 10 or 15 minutes. That was a big scientific treat for the day. Bill said it cleaned him up really good, but it really didn't do anything for alcoholism. But the fact that he actually got some information of why it was he could not stop. This is the first time where somebody said, listen, there's something about alcoholics. You get this phenomenon of craving that gets triggered, and you're not insane. Well, you're insane, but this is why it's happening. It's just beyond your control. So he gets another dose of self-knowledge in this experience. He says, it relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics, the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remains strong in other respects. And we saw that in the early part of Bill's story, until we get into the end-stage alcoholism. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained. Understanding myself now, I shared hope with high hope. For three or four months, the goose hung high. Job, car, sex, drunk, the 1990s syndrome, right? I know not to pick up. If I just don't go to that place, I'll be fine. If I don't drink, I'm going to be fine, but what happens? The emotional Brommer kicks in because more restless, irritable discontent. all of a sudden that mental blank spot kicks in and he picks up and boom, off to the races again. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer, self-knowledge. And if off to a side you want to put a big in quotations, not. Self-knowlege is great for problem drinkers heavy drinkers but for the real alcoholic it's going to last us until we pick up that drink which is inevitable if we don't get God. Just knowing that he was an alcoholic and he couldn't touch the first drink It wasn't enough to keep Bill away from it, because he goes along to say, but it was not, for the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski jump. After a time, I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. she would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum so Dr. Silkworth is having a conversation with Lois and the door is ajar and Bill actually hears Lois being told he's going to die this is probably how it's going to happen you need to prepare yourself for this and he had just been told that himself which is one thing but now he told yeah he's the fact it wasn't just some doctor throwing forth smoke this is what's really going to happen they did not need to tell me I knew and almost welcomed the idea it was a devastating blow to my pride I don't know about you guys I really didn't want to kill myself at the end of my using and drinking, I didn't wanna wake up in the morning I often envisioned myself going into a 7-11 and being a hero and getting shot and dead I did not wanna go on I knew I could not control myself and I was swirling the drain the quality of my life was leaving me fast and for Bill had left a long time ago, and he finally got information of why it was. So Bill got a dose of, this is his third detox, by the way, we're talking about right now. In the first detox, he got information which worked good until he picked up, and now he's got fear, which is going to keep him sober until he picks up. I got this highlighted in green. I, who thought so well of myself and my abilities and my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. ego deflation to a degree but for what there was no AA to go to there wasn't even 90 and 90, there was not plug in they had plug in jug I guess some middle of the road therapy going on, but there was no spiritual solution at this time it was just Bill you're going to drink this is how it's going to look can I get a sponsor? no, this is what it's going to looks like now I was to plunge into the dark joining that endless procession of socks who'd gone on before. I thought of my poor wife. There had been much happiness after all, what I would not give to make amends, but that was over now. You know, when I'm working with guys and I get to this part, I like to think of it as Bill W. sitting in his bed. He's just thinking of everything he's put himself through, everything he'S put his loved ones through, everything that Lois has been going through. And imagine like a chalkboard behind him, you know, listing every despicable self-loathing thing that he's done And he just wants to, like, start fresh. And I just, like. Wake up tomorrow and start over again. And that's what we can do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Who have that same thing through the step process. We get that reboot. We get a whole new life. We can take everything of this shame, guilt, remorse. And through the program, start flesh. He didn't have that opportunity. He was destined at that point to just go and drink himself to death. I got this next paragraph myself highlighted boxed. because this is one of Bill's first real, real first step. Mind if I read that one, Joe? Sure. No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Repeat that. No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morasses of self pity. It's not like life is going good and yeah, I got in trouble at the office, let's go to AA. It's like this guy wishes he was dead. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I'd been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. Alcohol was my master I have alcohol actually I was alcohol's biatch anything alcohol wanted me to do I didn't a lot of people say well I've got to put slave there it's like I don't know to be a biatch is like just whatever they tell you to do you do you know and alcohol had me doing things that I never would have done it brought me down to places I never when I realized, for me, one weekend I was on a run and I picked up the phone accidentally. Whoa, never do that. And it was one of my sponsee brothers. And he's like, you're drunk. I said, no, I'm not. And the next thing you know, my sponsor's called, my branch sponsor, they've got, you know. The SWAT team comes in. And I've been going to this meeting and there's been just a lot of real good advice. It's like don't drink between meetings and you'll be fine. You've got a white chip. You don't have to drink anymore. If you feel like drinking, call me, you now. And it wasn't working for me. you know? And I did not want to drink. I really wanted to have what everybody had. I didn't know because they weren't throwing the book at me at this time. That's when I realized I'm beat. I am not in control anymore. I don't want to do this, but I keep doing it. And I think Bill had finally himself just realized that, you know, he had this enormous realization where he finally for the first time saw alcohol is bigger than him. And in that moment, he essentially got, you know, his first step. He finally saw the truth of what it was and not the falseness of his drunken reality. So back to detox. He's been in rehab a few times. You can relate to this probably, right? But imagine not even AA to go to afterwards. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital, a broken man, fear sobered me up for a bit until he picked up. Underline then came the insidious day of that first drink. And on Armistice Day in 1934, I was off again Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere or would stumble along to a miserable end. Up to this point, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty depressed about my alcoholic situation. There's not much hope. There's no much, like, woo-hoo, I'm going to get sober. No, you're working with newcomers and stuff like that. They need a little bit of hope at this time, you know, and perfect timing. Bill just throws it in right there. How dark it is before the dawn. In reality, that was the beginning of my last debauch. I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace and usefulness in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes. So we get another definition here. We hear lots of different definitions for insanity. But where the book talks about insanity, it's referring specifically to that thought that precedes the first drink. The insidious insanity of the first drinking. whatever obsessive lie we tell ourselves to make it okay to take that first one which offsets the phenomenon of craving. And I want to talk about the foreshadowing here, you know? I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call a fourth dimension. Take your time. You didn't get sick overnight. You can't get well overnight. This is back when they were strictly using the power of God to get you recovered from alcoholism. It wasn't a slow process. It was instant. God got into your life and your life shifted. You got into the process of helping others your life continued to shift you became a purposeful driven person for the first time in years no wonder he's having a happy joyous and free matter of fact we're going to wrap up right now because our minutes time we got some really good news next week his life is going to change thanks guys