The Daily Reprieve From Insanity – Lee and Bob D. – 12 Steps Workshop – Paramount Group – 11 – Part 1 of 2 – Scott L.

I'm Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Bob! Page 30. Yeah. Alright. More about alcoholism. Some of you new people are going, no more about alcohol. Summer. More about alcoolism. This is... This chapter is chock full of me. The first lines coming into it nails me. It says most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. There's a peculiar thing about alcoholics that we don't want to be alcoholics and it's weird. As a matter of fact, not only don't we want to be an alcoholic, we'll go to great lengths mentally to convince ourselves and anybody that will listen to us that we're not alcoholics If you were to poll a thousand members of AA that were sober over five years, I think you would almost unanimously find that three things are pertinent to every single one of them. The first thing is that they would all be able to tell you about a time in their life now that they're sober looking back maybe years before they got sober when they were definitely at that point in time alcoholic but yet at that time they would have sworn they weren't. They would also tell you about the great lengths they went to to avoid coming to AA and getting sober. I mean, we go to great lengths. I mean let's face it we're the people who buy the self-help books. I mean we're not the ones We're the ones that reparent our inner child. We go to the seminars. We do the Est and the Psy and the Vision the Sweat Lodges the Macrobiotics If alcoholics and family members who get sick from alcoholism would stop the self-help stuff that multi-billion dollar industry would implode from a lack of participation. We are the people who do that. We don't want to be alcoholic and we don't wanna come to AA and then the third thing that we would unanimously agree on is that this is coming here finding out that we're alcoholic and joining Alcoholics Anonymous This is the absolute best thing that's ever happened to us. Kind of lets you know that we don't really know what's good for us. The next line, it says, No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. I am bodily and mental. I am over 29 years sober, and I'm bodily and mentally different from non-alcoholics. I am bodily different, obviously, because of my physiological allergic reaction to alcohol that waits for me. You can't be sober enough to overcome that. You can'T be emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially healthy enough to overcome the phenomenon of craving. That's why we see guys in detox in Vegas that drink with various lengths of sobriety. I saw a guy years ago, 45 years of sobrieting went out again. The phenomenon of craving waited to clean his clock. He's dead today because the disease had progressed within him. And I am mentally different. And this is the insidious part. I am mentally different today, but I have a daily reprieve from the insanity of my alcoholism contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. But on a spiritual bad hair day, I'm not quite like other people. I'm a little bit different. I'm the kind of guy, and listen, I'm talking about in sobriety that I'm the guy that I don't get headaches. I get brain tumors, right? You know what I'm saying? I can't tell you how many thousands of just deep, emotionally moving deathbed speeches I've rehearsed in my mind, you know? It's just all wonderful stuff. I'm a guy who if my boss in the morning, and this happened to me, I go in at 9 o'clock and I get a little note saying that my boss wants to talk to me in his office at 3 o' clock that afternoon. Now, a normal person would go about their business and at 3 O'clock go see what the boss wants. Not me. I'm a thinker. I start grinding away at what the heck does he want and I start thinking about every time I was a minute late for work and about the customers that didn't really seem to like me and about the people I work with, you know, I don't really, now that I think about it, I really can't trust them. They're probably talking behind my back and I start thinking about how much more work I'm doing than everybody else and how I'm not appreciated and by three o'clock, I am jacked up and I'm ready to go in there and tell him to take that job and shove it and I walk in there and I am there because he wants to give me a promotion and a raise. Thank God I kept my mouth shut. Years later, I sponsored a guy who went in there and quit his job and found out later from a fellow employee he was about to get a raise. I'm not like mental. Mentally, I'm a little different. But on a good spiritual hair day, you don't know it. I don't Know It. You Don't Know it. I fit. The treatment for alcoholism gives me a sense of community I'm part of. But on a bad spiritual hair day, I'm different. On page 22, it alludes to something that I didn't really get it right away. I misinterpreted what it says. The very first line in the last full paragraph, it says we know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. well I thought that meant that we were going to be normal it doesn't say that it says he reacts much like other men a transvestite is much like a woman but not really what that means is I can go out there in the world and I can put on my sober suit and fool them. You know what I'm saying? But when my emotions start, and I'm not spiritually fit, and i've got a resentment or some self-centered fear, I'm back in the driver's seat running the show I'm about to be in the center again, and when I start getting spiritually ill, I don't react like other people. The best I can do is keep my mouth shut on days like that. I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows and I always will be this is a chronic illness this is not something you get over and there's an illusion I think this is a deadly illusion in Alcoholics Anonymous it's a game we play with each other because we don't know any better we try to sound like we've outgrown our alcoholism in the meetings you hear, I used to do this myself because I want your approval I want the approval of the old timers. I'd share in a meeting that the subject would be fear, and I'd talk about, oh, how I used to have fear. Whoa. When I was drinking, like I don't ever have it. Or when I usedと be self-centered. Right? And how I cured myself. But now that I've found God, I'm no longer like that again. You know, when I hear people like that, I always look for the lobotomy scars. How did you do that? I mean, right? I mean how did you do that, what did you have cut out? I mean because I'm still a little different. He says no person likes to think he's bodily and mentally different from his fellows therefore it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized and our sober careers have been characterised by countless vain attempts to prove we can drink like other people or maybe I'm sober to think like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion, and this is the first one. There's three illusions in the book in alcoholism. And this first one is what really kept me from ever getting a foothold in this thing. There are people in this room that will drink again because of this illusion, and you're not even aware of it because it goes right below the radar. This idea that somehow, someday, under the right set of circumstances, if you were physically in good shape, if you Were financially in good shape, if you had all your ducks in a row, maybe if you didn't drink that stuff anymore and switched to this, the idea that under the right set of circumstances you can control and enjoy it. In other words, that you could enjoy it and jump start the party like it was in the good old days and control it enough to keep the damage down to something reasonable. Right? Like maybe just go out for a weekend kind of do a get high drive by and come back. And I kept relapsing because I had that idea in the back of my mind that if things were bad enough sober, I still got a back door out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Right? I still think that under the right conditions, I could control it and I could enjoy it. I still believe that there's ease and comfort in the bag and the bottle for me. I still think I can reap that and get away with it. And I'll tell you, it doesn't matter intellectually how much I understand and believe that this stuff's bad for me. When my emotions are starting to put the screws to me and I think there's relief out that back door, I'm going. Father Martin said something one time. My sponsor used to talk about it also in that he gave a classic talk, The Disease of Perception, where he says when emotion is in conflict with intellect, the emotion always wins. You can know intellectually that this is a bad idea. You're still on your way to do it. Do you know what I'm saying? Right? As you're walking into the place you shouldn't be walking into, you know intellectually, oh, boy, I'm going to regret this next week, but right now. Right? Right? Because I think I can get away with it. I still think there's fun left in it. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. It's talking about a place within us. It refers to it as our inntermost self. I think one of the I am so glad that Scott and I do this and I'm so glad that we are in a renaissance period resurgence of the basic principles in the big book period in Alcoholics Anonymous because I know what it's like I came into AA in the 70s where people had lost touch with the big books and everybody was trying to figure out the steps from the 12 by 12 which is a great book it's just not the basic it's not a set of directions really to work the steps It's a series of essays about the steps for people with further experience into sobriety. Great book. But this, one of the good things that's happened is that we're, the fellowship now is aware you can go to a meeting today and achieve something you couldn't achieve in 1975 or 1972. 1972, you'd go to an old-timer in most AA groups. How do we do the fourth step? and they wouldn't even know what page it was on in the big book. They would uniformly turn you to the 12 by 12 and 12 by 12 study group. Now people know, we know the steps are in the book today. Matter of fact, most people can tell you what pages they're on. And that's the good news. The bad news is that sometimes the steps are trying to be turned into an academic process. We're creating step technicians. The problem with the alcoholic ego if you have an ego like mine, is it will take even the most spiritual wonderful things and use them for its own self aggrandizement. As if the knowledge about the book is power. Power to self gratify, power to distinguish someone. And there are some people and Alcoholics Anonymous that have intellectual great capacity to explain the big book. But AlcoholicsAnonymous is not an academic process, it's an experiential. This place it talks about in step one, our innermost selves, is a place that I think all of this has to happen. That's why there seems to be a spiritual backwash in most of the steps. it's like you get down on your knees and you say the third step prayer and three years later you crash and burn in sobriety and then all of a sudden it becomes serious right there's a there's like it's, it's like you take the actions and maybe a couple years later it starts to go get down in your into this innermost self thing but it's not an academic process and Scott and I are we talk a lot about our experiences we're not step technicians so much as people sharing our actual experience. And it must occur within your innermost self. And I think that's one of the reasons I could, I became an alcoholism counselor coming out of a treatment center. And I was really good up until the day they fired me for being drunk on the job. I was a really good alcoholism counsellor. I had it up here. But it didn't do me any good because I didn't have it down here. And you know how you've got it? You know what you can tell when you get it down here? It comes out your feet. Right? It comes at your feet Throughout the 70's I would get sober and I could spout all kinds of stuff about alcoholism and intellectually I had it but if you would have watched my feet my actions were the actions of someone who wasn't really powerless. My actions were someone who now has learned their lesson and has gotten everything under control. Thank you. Right? Don't need a sponsor, don't need... Bob's in charge now. Bob's learned his lesson and I'm in charge again. And I drank again. Because I got it up here and I didn't get it down in here. So we fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion, number two, the second delusion or delusion. The delution that we are like other people. What other people? Well this is the chapter more about alcoholism so I would suppose they're talking about non-alcoholics. The delusion that we are like non-alcoholics or that we presently may be like you'd think after 20 years of not thinking about a drink and with a good life and your emotions are all doing pretty well. I mean, how alcoholic could you be at that point? The delution that we're like other people has to be smashed. And it talks about this in step 10 when it talks About the relapse dynamic. But one of the things that happens so easily in sobriety is that we can so easily get seduced by the fruits of our own recovery into a vague sense of okayness that is not right. It's, yeah, I got a nice car and a big house and I feel good and I've got self-respect and I made all my amends. And do you ever notice that when you, after five or six years of sobrietry, When things are going your way, you don't really feel as alcoholic as you did when you were in detox. When you're in detox, oh boy, I'm an alcoholic. Oh man, am I alcoholic. I got a bad case. You stick a couple hundred grand in my bank account and give me a nice house and a little bit of self-respect. I mean, yeah, well, I guess I am alcoholic. And what happens is I start acting like someone who's not as alcoholic as I was when I was in detox. And then I bet you there's rarely a week that goes by that in the detox in Las Vegas I don't see someone from various states around the country that had been sober over 10 years and drank again. and Vegas seems to be a magnet for people with long term sobriety that drinks again something about Las Vegas it's like a traxum what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas we got graveyards and prisons are full of people who had happened in Vegas and they stayed in Vegas that's no lie that's the truth we call it the hitting bottom capital of the world I hope my prayer often is that I ask God to that I always my actions will always reflect the actions of a person who is serious as serious about recovery today as I was when I was in my first 30 days. I don't want to look like the guy who's gotten over this thing because I've seen what happens to the guys who get over this things. Alcoholics are like men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever regains control. All of us felt at times we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I went through that. You know, you get those things where you change towns, you change jobs, you get a new relationship or whatever and you think, ah, okay, I'm out of the woods. Inevitably, that's when life would, my alcoholism would slam me even harder. And when I get seduced into a feeling of okayness, I relax my guard a little bit. And here it comes. Wham! Until the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization to me is not when I'm drunk. That's early sobriety. It's the hopelessness. It's that I am going to probably do this again and I can't stop myself. pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness over any considerable period. It doesn't say we get worse, never better. It doesn'T say over any reasonable period of drinking. I am absolutely convinced by my own experience and the observation of probably 100, 400 people that we get worse while we're in these rooms. It's just that we cover up, as the disease progresses within us, we have a thin spiritual veneer that seems to protect us from the disease. But once we crack that veneers and we pick up a drink, we don't pick up where we left off. Oh, I've never seen anybody pick up where they left off, it's as if while we are in these rooms, the disease is doing push-ups waiting for a chance to get its foot in the door. We don't pick up where we left off. If we picked up where it left off, it wouldn't be so bad. But the baffling thing about the progression of the illness is we get so much worse and we don't know it. And you know what progresses the most? And I think it's why guys with long-term sobriety that drink again rarely ever get sober again is that the ego progresses the most. And I've work with these guys, and I very seldom do you get one of them get a foothold again because they become the I know guys. They become the guys that were 15, 20, 30 years sober and you try to talk to them, yeah, yeah. What they're really saying is shut up. They don't know nothing, but they think they do. Intellectually, they got a head full of AA, but they got nothing in here in their innermost self and this is what they're focusing on and they tell you yeah, yeah, I know, I do up here, yeah they do but not down here we are like men who have lost their legs we never grow new ones the last sentence in that paragraph talks about something it's just such a hideous thing it says science may one day accomplish this but it hasn't done so yet and they're talking about turning an alcoholic into a non-alcoholic. About every year or two, something's in the paper, some new kind of deal, where you're going, oh, take this pill. Oh, this is a good pill. Not like the other 500 that almost killed people. This is a great pill. And all it does is it just bleeds out of AA about 1,000 people that die of alcoholism, and then you hear the big oops. I remember the Rand report it bled a lot of people out the Rand Corporation did a study that they could turn alcoholics into non-alcoholic and years later they found out most of those people had died of alcoholism or were institutionalized I remember this sounds so bizarre in today's world but some of the old timers can verify this, there was a time in this country back in the 70's where if you were an alcoholic and you were newly sober and you Were a little uncomfortable with your emotions, the standard operating procedure in the medical profession was to give you some medication that they told you and assured you was non-addictive. It's especially for guys just like you and it was called Valium. That's right. You look at the old PDRs from the early 70s and it says it's non-addictive It took a whole generation to give the big medical oops. I wish they'd stop. I wishthey would stop trying. You know what I think it is? I thinkit's some sort of untreated Al-Anon scientists in laboratories, you know, that are obsessed with fixing us, right? I just think they cut it out. All they ever do is hurt us. I got an idea. Go ahead. Okay. Let's indulge them. Let's have a little fantasy here. All right. Let's assume that they could actually come up with a pill. Okay. They're going to create a pill, it's going to take a guy like you, you're goingto take this pill, and you're gonna be able to drink socially. Well, if you're a real alcoholic, the first thing that's going to, you're going to think of is, well, how social could I get? I wonder what four of those would do. Within a week, there'd be guys shooting them and smoking them. I mean, because we don't really want to drink like non-alcoholics. What we want is I want the consequences of a non-alcoholic, but I want to drink like an alcoholic. There's not an alcoholic ever that really wants to be the guy who gets off of work, worked hard all day, thirsty, goes by the bar on the way home, actually has two short beers and then goes home and cuts the grass. No. Two short beers, a gallon of tequila, I'm going to Tijuana, you know? That's grassy to you. There we go. The bottom page 31 says we do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Here's the diagnosis process, the test. Step over to the nearest bar room, one down the street here. Step over the nearest Bar Room, try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and then stop abruptly. Well, that's a bad test. And it goes on to say it might be worth a bad case of the jitters to get a full knowledge of your condition, and maybe in 1939 that was what was on the table. So our society has ratcheted up the ante on taking that test quite a bit. Now maybe what's on the line is you get in your car and you kill somebody or get a DUI, or maybe you just can't stop and that phenomenon of craving is in you stronger than you could ever imagine, and it's like letting that gorilla out of that cage and you can't get him back in and it is too late now. So we don't even recommend the test in today's Alcoholics Anonymous really anymore. I remember in the old days and 70s watching old timers. A guy would say, well, I am not sure if he was an alcoholic. I watched a guy pull two $20 bills out of his pocket so quick and shove them at the guy and say, go find out. Go over here and find out We don't do that anymore. And besides, when you think about it objectively, if you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic, it's not a viable test, really. Let's hypothetically... I'm going to go down here to take the test, find out if I'm an alcoholic. I'm gonna go in this bar, I'mma have two drinks, that's it, shut her down, go home. Now, you can't smoke nothing, take nothing, nothing, nothing, two drinks. That's it. About halfway through the second drink, it's gonna become very clear to me that this is a bad test day. there'd be some girl in that bar that I just have to have a drink with because she might be her some guy I know would come in always Joe would be there Joe's always got something the game, the game oh I didn't realize that God I can't leave now and it's like somewhere in the middle of the second drink a key turns in my head I experience the allergic reaction to alcohol the phenomenon of craving and it uses my total mental abilities to rationalize and justify and explain myself to myself so that the next drink seems like it's my idea. And I don't get that it's an allergic reaction to alcohol. I don'T GET THAT IT'S A CREAMING. My mind starts until it paints a picture. Well, yeah, I know I was only going to have two, but one more. and I think that that's me. I don't think it's a craving. I don' t see that the phenomenon of craving is using my mind against me. And last part, let's jump over to page 151. Bottom of the page. So, I'm a chronic relapser and alcoholic synonymous for over seven years because I can't buy your whole package it doesn't make sense to me and I don't do nothing that doesn't make sense to me I don' t do nothing that I don''t feel like doing I'm unsponsorable I'm unteachable I'm part of a group in Alcoholics Anonymous that talks about in the beginning of chapter 5, those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. I'm part of that group for 7 years. I am dying. So what happened to me? How did I get out of that group and into the group that did? What broke me? What broken my ego? William James one time said that the problem with us is that we have no self-esteem in these tremendous egos And our ego is structured in such a way that we can't listen in order to hear anything new. We can only listen to see how we're already right. Well, how do you break that? How do you bring that mechanism to its knees within you? And on page 151 and 152 is exactly what happened. It says this first part at the bottom of 151 talks about me and the years I was in and out. It says, now and then, a serious drinker being dry at the moment says, oh, I don't miss it at all. I feel better. I'm working better. I'm having a better time. As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such as Sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. And that's exactly me. You know, what I think is an asset is one of my deadly liabilities. And one of My Deadly Liabilities is I always have had the ability to think positive. You can beat me to the ground and I'm going to imagine I'm gonna get back up again. I'm gunna imagine I am going to get back on my feet. And in regular life that's an asset. I'll tell you when it comes to alcoholism it's deadly because It prevents me from ever getting humble enough and desperate enough to be responsible to do this way of life. It keeps me in the driver's seat of a car that's in a demolition derby, right? And I can't see that. He fools himself. Inwardly, I would give anything to take a half dozen drinks and get away with them. I will presently try the old game again, and I did, and I did for the same reason it says here in the book because I'm not happy about my sobriety. Not really. Abstinence feels like I'm doing time. And I can say all the work better, feel better, oh I'm so grateful to be sober crap inside me where I really live. I'm restless, irritable, discontent, I got some low-level depression. I'm trying to outrun. I don't fit anywhere. This ain't no good. And I go back to it because I'm not really happy about my sobriety. I cannot picture life without alcohol. Not really, I can't. To me in those years, AA had good news and bad news. The good news is, Bob, you know, if you went to thousands and thousands of these stupid meetings, you'll probably stay sober the rest of your life. and the bad news, I'm going to live a long time. Oh boy. Because I can't imagine life without something. I can imagine life without alcohol if I had a lot of really good drugs maybe. But I can imagine life with alcohol without something and someday, and this is exactly what happened to me, this is it, Someday, he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then, at that point, he'll know loneliness such as few do. He'll be at the jumping off place and he'll wish for the end. I went to a bridge in 1978 with a bottle of Richard's Wild Irish Rose to take my own life because of this. Not because of the shame and the guilt and the face in prison. I roll with that stuff. I went there because I was finally in a trap I couldn't spring. I realized that there's absolutely nothing I can do to jumpstart the party. It was hopeless. I had tried everything, and my drinking had turned on me, and it was awful and pathetic. I'd become an alcoholic of the hopeless variety, finally. And it wasn't hope that I was going to get off the streets. That wasn't what I was hopeless about. What was really hopeless is that I couldn't ever get back the fun again. And I knew it. And yet, I couldnít live without it either. I was in a trap I couldnít spring. When you canít live with it and you can't live without it, itís a bad deal. When drinking, no matter, even if youíve never had a suicidal thought in your life, if you stay in a place where drinking is awful and not drinking is awful and you don't see a third door after a while suicide can start looking like a good deal because there's no relief and there's no well being in either condition and that's the bad part of alcoholism that's why guys like me kill themselves because I feel hopeless I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety but I couldn't kill myself and I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous with a different attitude. And for the first time in all those years I could hear you, I got a sponsor and I did everything he told me to do. Crazy stuff. Stuff that if I'd have been in my right mind I'd had never done. Now you guys took advantage of my weakness, I'll tell you. And I'll never be able to repay you for it either. You saved my life. And I was sober a little while and a guy, you know, I came off the streets, I'd been a homeless guy, and the people in A gave me clothes to wear. They gave me cigarettes. They gave you their attention, their time. One guy one day is giving me a bunch of clothes that he didn't want anymore. He's used the clothes, and he gave me some old novels. Hold that. Let's close this session with that. Take a break? No. Let me run for about a half hour, and I'll let you close this section with that." Okay. That's too powerful. All right. Okay. I don't want to follow that. Okay. I know where he's going with this and we'll close this session with it I want to talk a little bit about an experience I had in my flying days I flew among other things the C-141 which is a four engine jet transport I've been drunk on five continents I don't have any idea how many islands we flew all over the world but we were in New Zealand and they have a beer down there they call Leopard Strong I don' t know about the leopard And man, that stuff was wicked. And we left there and went to American Samoa, which is about an eight-hour run. Took on fuel. We left Samoa for Honolulu, which was another eight hours with nothing but water in between. Halfway across, we get into the new fuel, and it's contaminated. It's got water in it. At our altitude, it's minus 55 centigrade. And they don't call it water. They call it ice. And it clogs the fuel lines. The jet engines about that big around go boom. and you can't maintain your altitude, we come down into warmer air, the engines will run down here. But a jet engine is much more efficient at altitude. We don't have gas at this altitude to get where we're going. So we go back up and we can't stay and we come back down. The worst thing you can do for gas mileage in a plane is this, and that's what we're doing. And we're dealing with math. And the math says we're gonna put a 300,000 pound airplane into the Pacific Ocean sometime this afternoon. And we're all going to die. Many of us have had the experience of thinking we're going to die in the next few seconds. We've laid down motorcycles, we've been in collisions, we've looked down gun barrels. A few seconds I'm going to tell you that four hours is a long time to think you're going to die today. It's a long time and I promise God if he'd get me out of this one, I'm gonna quit smoking, I'll quit drinking, quit spending in the evening with ladies I'm not married to. I'm going back to church. I might build some churches. You've got to memorize the Bible. I left nothing out. And as we get closer and closer, just showing flat empty on these fuel tanks, what we decided to do was to shoot a forced landing at Hickam. We turned final at 9,000 feet, if you know anything about flying. And our decision was that we could make what's called high station on a forced landing, that we could at least crash and dry land so our bodies could be sent home for burial. That's a conversation in a cockpit where you think you're going to die for four hours today. And we landed and taxied in and they dipped the tanks like you dip your crankcase. See how much oil you got? We did not have sufficient fuel left on that airplane to crank four engines and taxi to the runway from where we were parked. We didn't have that much left. I didn't even check into the quarters. I went straight to the officer's club, back to the stag bar, the crazy section, put my bags down next to the barstool. I said, Mai Tai, the big one, pack of Marlboros. I look at it today through these eyes and this is what I see, is that in those days, those few times that I prayed, I was trying to make him my God. What you've taught me here is how to make me his man. I had it backwards. I heard so many things backwards. The major difference, by the way, is that this works. I think there's a significant difference. A couple of gifts from my home group. The first rule of holes, when you're in one, stop digging. And the first rule of cavalry is similar to it. First rule of cavalry, when the horse is dead, dismount. don't go to the whip dismount and these are not easy concepts for us i didn't sleep the first three nights i was in treatment i'm told that for people like me that's not uncommon and i'm laying there the fourth night knowing i'm not going to sleep again as some of you probably know if you're not drinking and you're not sleeping. It stays dark a long time at night, man. And I got to stay in that bunk from like 11 to 630 in the morning. I get up and tinkle, but I got a stand at bunk and I can't get this thing turned off. It won't stop. And this is what happened to me. A review of my life happened. It was like watching a movie and I've always given myself credit for the intentions. I'm probably the best intended person you've ever met. I have some magnificent intentions. My favorite one, I do close-up magic. And my favorite one was that I was going to get a clown suit when I was on the road instead of running the saloons and chasing the dollies, put on the clown suit and take my magic kit into a children's hospital and do a show for the kids. Everybody said, take a great guy. I haven't done it yet, by the way. Take a great guide to do that in one of these days. And I was taking full credit for my intentions while the world was judging me by my actions. And this night, as I saw my life, the intentions weren't there. It's not a pretty story without them. And I got to the place where I began to think about the worst thing I've ever done. We're going to talk about it when we get to step nine. And and I'd always been able to stop it before. You know, a couple of joints will do that. A six pack, three double scotch. I know how to turn that off, but not laying at a bunk in a treatment center. I don't can't get it stopped. and I lay there for a period of time, I don't know how long, thinking about the worst thing I'd ever done. And I reached what I call bottom. We use the term, I don' t see the definition in the literature. So this is my experience with it. Bottom isn' t on the physical plane. I know men serving long prison sentences as a direct result of this disease planning to drink when they get out. That's not bottom. I've puked blood more than once. I've been in plenty of kinds of trouble. That's no bottom. Bottom's in here. Bottom is when I hate my guts. When I'm so repulsed by me and what I've done that I'll pay any price for relief from that. And at that point, I'm laying on my back in this bed. This part of me, this didn't happen in my throat, did not come out of my mouth. My brain did not think it. This partofme screamed to a God I don't think I believed in. God forgive me. It was in here. And it was loud, but it was in her. And everything I'm about to tell you happened in the next second. suddenly, there was a magnificent light shining just on me. It was illuminating the whole room. And I could see that room with my eyes closed in better detail than I can see this one right now. There was a physical sensation similar to the one when they've just finished taking the x-rays of your teeth and they picked that heavy blanket up off of you, that lead thing. Like something heavy that I was unaware of was laying on my body and it flew off of me so fast that it felt like I was going to float off the bed. There was a visual behind me here, there was a wall and there were different shapes and colors of glass stuck in it. I can't describe that real well. And this light was coming over the wall and I believe God was right there. And I knew in that second that there was God, that that God had the power to forgive me and I was forgiven. And I used to say God forgave me then, and I don't say that anymore because I don' t speak for God. And I'm not comfortable around people that do. But I know that I received the forgiveness then. I don''t know that he ever judged me. I don ''t know. But I now I receive the forgiveness in that moment. And I think that wall was there. This is just my observation. What was going on with me felt so good it almost hurt. And I can''t explain that. and it was just metamorphosis doesn't cover it and I lay there in the presence of infinite love and I can't tell you how long I've talked to other people in our fellowship who've had experiences like this one and they all agree when I say this what we call time does not exist in that presence and I cannot explain that to you but I can report it because that's what happened to me I lay here I lay in the master's presence for a while And I don't know how long. And after that, I slept. And the reason I know that is because the next morning I woke up. And I had not had that experience in several days. Just been laying there all night. And I wokeup wanting to be one of his guys. And that was my first cornerstone. We do a lot of promises. Page 14. We do A Lot of Promises. I'm sorry, page 12. This is from Bill's story. Very bottom of the page. But soon the sense of his presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. I can't tell you what Bill was saying. I'll tell you What I'm saying. I don't believe that event alone would have kept me sober these 23 years and a couple of months. It was necessary for me to do the rest of this. That was just a cornerstone. It was for a last gasper like me who was on, maybe on my deathbed. I don' t know. I think I was a lot closer to death than anybody knew. It was just the beginning for me. That alone would not have done what's happened for me. And I just received it as a gift. That was the bottom of page 12. I'm sorry, I confused myself. That's easy. When I was new, I was saying crazy things like I'm having a good day or I'm having a bad day. Isn't that insane? If you had asked me my first day sober, what kind of day are you having? It would have taken me several hours to tell you and the air would have been blue for a mile and a half downwind by the time I got finished. Yeah. And I look back today and I can't say that was a bad day. Man, I don't know. When I say I'm having a good day, what I'm really saying is Scott's will is being done today. When I'm saying I'm Having a Bad Day, Scott's Will is Not Being Done Today. Scott'swill is one of the biggest problems I've got or there are a number of mistakes in the big book. It's one or the other. Yeah, I got to get out of the business of judging things because it just makes me crazy every time. My sponsor said in the history of this planet, no human has ever been put in an insane asylum for being insane. Never. They put us in there for acting insane. And none of us has ever been let out for being sane. They let us out for acting sane. And so on those days when I'm crazy, if I don't act on it, they don't know. And I get to walk around like everybody else. I fool them by the hundreds. It's an important distinction for a guy like me. Page 46. I'm what they call an immediate gratifier I want it right now so here's some right now first full paragraph yes we have agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experience let us make haste to assure you we found that as soon as that's like right now as soonas we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves we commenced to get results and this may be the most important phrase in the book even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. So that means in steps 3 and 11, I'm not going to understand God. That's not what this is about at all. Miss Linda, my beloved wife, get one of her CDs. She says if God were small enough for me to understand, he wouldn't be big enough to handle some of the stuff I'm going to need for him to handle. Yeah, this is not about me understanding God. It means I don't have to believe what they told me. We're going to talk about that again in a minute. Next paragraph, about five lines down. As soon as, that's right now, as soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, spirit of the universe, underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense and power and direction. Provided we took other simple steps. I've always wondered idly what steps they might be talking about. I don't know. Second paragraph on the next page. we needed to ask ourselves one short question do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself and there that phrase is, that beautiful phrase as soon as a man can say that he does believe or is willing to believe. We emphatically, that means with power, we emphaticly assure him that he is on his way wonderful stuff wonderful, wonderful stuff. Page 20 oh let's do this too, this will be fun who in this room has had a dream this calendar year about alcohol or an alcohol substitute? Okay. I want the new people to see that. Okay, you ain't the only ones. I'm having them still. I had two within a week a couple of months ago. At about six months sober, I got honest with my sponsor again. I said, man, I'm havin' these dreams. And I'm havenin' them. Did you see the Cheech and Chong movies? You remember that joint they're smokin' about this big around? I had that one. I did. I had the one where I'm at the corner of the bar and I'm drinking a Coke. My buddy's drinking a beer. I pick up his beer by mistake and I can taste it as I wake up. And then I lay there for the next four hours trying to figure out if that happens, will I have to get another desire chip? Yeah. And I said, Jerry, I'm having these dreams. And he said, do you have a master's degree or higher in the psychology of dream analysis? I said, no, I don't. Does anybody? No, I didn't either. I said no. He said, I'm going to tell you what the dreams mean. I said okay. He said when you wake up from one of those dreams it means it's time to tinkle. Don't take my word for it. Trot down the hall and find out. and then you get back in bed and have a gratitude prayer that was only a dream stuff was a major part of your life for a long time you're going to dream about it I've got 23 years I still am okay don't worry about it I'll give you another piece of that I flew for the United States Air Force for five years I still dream flying occasionally I'm not heading for the recruiter's office this afternoon don't hurry about it it's happening to all of us I think it's important phase 20 you may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very ill from drinking doubtless you're curious to discover how and why in the face of expert opinion of the contrary we've recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body if you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it once you get overit that's kind of an important caveat if you just hear because the judge gave you one of those gift certificates to get signed don't worry about it you're gonna be able to drink again all right now you may not have had your last drink but you've enjoyed your last one. We're taking that away today. That's right, yeah. If you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it, may I ask you what I have to do? The purpose of this book is to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we've done. I like to observe what it doesn't say. It doesn't say, what do I haveto know? We'll teach you whatwe learned. There are people that know this better than I do that are drunk today. Got a guy in my home group who has a photographic memory. His first three days in treatment he read the big book. He can recite it almost perfectly. He drank three more years knowing it isn't worth much. It doesn't say what to have to believe will give you a new religion. I would point out if you're new that if what you believed worked you probably wouldn't be sitting here. So you might want to release your grip just a little bit on some of the things that you believe because maybe we can help you. Just release it a little bit. Lay it aside. Pick it back up later if you need to. It doesn' t say what you have to interpret, what you haveto understand. It says what you hafta do. What I had to do was to place myself unreservedly in the care of a sponsor. I've never seen or heard tell of a great coach of any athletic activity that didn't play the game. You can't learn to be a good coach out of a book. I needed a player coach. I needed someone who had already done this. That's what we're going to talk about. Let's do this page 35 thing. Do you want to? There's a great question here on page 35. I think it's one of the most important questions in the book. It says, what sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? That's the question that they're asking here. It takes a while to set it up and the answer actually comes at the top of the next page. Top of page 36 says, yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story. I'd like to make an observation of the difference here. What we asked him was exactly what happened. What we got was his story. Can you see how those things might not be congruent? Okay, Bob is going to play the part of this guy for us. I came to work on Tuesday morning. What happened to Monday? A lot of guys work on Monday. What do you cut hair for a living? A lot, a lot of people work on Sunday. You might want to consider adding Monday to your work week. But go ahead with your story. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. Irritated? How about the veins on your neck throb and your face gets red and glows when you think about the fact that you're a flunky here and you used to own the place? What do you mean, irritated? Your undies are in a permanent wad on this. But continue with your history. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. You had a fight with your boss if you don't think it's serious. Now that's Alka-Logic of the very first order I mean, who else in the world fights with a boss are always serious there are no exceptions to that but please go on this is a great story Then I decided to drive into the country and see a prospect for a car That's where they all are I mean they never come on the lot, right? You got to Yes sir Boy we gotta get out of here Yeah baby So now we've established a pattern of thinking. Let's skip to the italics down at the bottom of the page for the continuation of this thought process. Suddenly, the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. The exact same kind of thinking? That's why it's so critically important for me to have a sponsor that can separate what actually happened from my story. Because I think if this guy had had a sponsor to do what I just did, We might not have gotten to this last piece. That's the kind of thinking that I need help with. And I was talking with Kate at the break. One of the hardest things to learn to do as a newcomer is to quit managing what your sponsor thinks of you. I'll tell you how to know if you've got a sponsor. If you can call your sponsor today with the question you asked your sponsor yesterday, and you know your sponsor gave you a great answer, you just can't remember what it was, if you can come and ask that question again today, I'd say you've Got a Sponsor. Because let me tell you a secret. All the lessons aren't for me. Sometimes the guys that I sponsor call and ask me a question that opens doors for me, yeah, or they remind me of something I badly needed to be reminded of. That's what happens on those things. So, so important. Hi there. Okay. Let's go to page 60. We're going to run about another 10 minutes, and then we're goingto probably start answering some of these questions because lunch is going to be served around 1230. We got a little bit off on our timing, but that happens. The rest of what we're going to do together, my presentation is going to be how I take a guy through these 12 steps. I don't propose that you need to do what I'm saying. I want you to know that if your sponsor disagrees with me, I agree with your sponsor. Your sponsor's right and I'm wrong in your case. And I mean it with all my heart. I believe God bless his sponsorship. I think there are a lot of great ways to do What's In This Book. It's just what I do. So I'm not selling this to anybody. I get them to this point, and I ask them the ABCs as questions. A, you're an alcoholic, can't manage your own life, you are an alcoholic. The book gives three, two main and one secondary characteristic. You either try to quit forever and can't, or you begin to lose control of your drinking once you begin to drink, or you have a little bit of a problem telling the truth all the time. So tell me about your experience with those characteristics, And I want him to tell me, because you say you're an alcoholic? Convince me. Use those characteristics and convince me. What he's doing is setting his own cornerstone as he tells these pieces of his story. Because he's convincing himself as he convinces me. And then part B, couldn't manage your own life. What happens when you manage your life? Got applications in where? What happened to the last job? Divorce was final win? And that's costing you how much? But what happens when You Run Your Life? Tell me about it. B, probably no human power could relieve their alcoholism. Who tried? Cops, courts, judges, wife. Oh, forgive me, wives. I forgot where I was. Psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, siblings, parents. You, who tried? And I'll tell you, I can't. Does it seem logical to you that given all of those people having tried, some of them probably pretty well qualified, and none were able to, is it logical to deduce that no human power will be able to relieve your alcoholism in the future? Does that make sense? Is B true for you? Page 12. 12th. Debbie Thatcher has been captured by a couple of members of the Oxford group and been saved from alcoholic... Help me with it, Bob. Commitment. Yeah, commitment. They're going to put him away forever like no doorknob on his side kind of place. And some of us are familiar. and some friends came in and saved him and he's sober 90 days he calls Bill Wilson he's resenting this to Bill Bill's having a little bit of trouble with the God concept slightly above halfway down page 12 my friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea he said why don't you choose your own conception of God that's an invitation to actually make a choice page 93 same concept they're going to tell me twice in the book must be really important 93, four lines down Stress the spiritual feature freely If the man be agnostic or atheist Make it emphatic He does not have to agree with your conception of God He can choose any conception he likes Provided it makes sense to him So what I'm going to ask him to do Is I want you to forget What they told you about God And I don't care who they are How qualified they claim to be We're laying that aside for now We're also going to put aside What you believe and what you think you believe And you may not know, we're putting that aside also. We have no interest in it. And our question here is what characteristics would you like God to have? Single words or short phrases, I want you to write them down. I'm going to make some suggestions in addition. If you like my suggestions, take them. If you don't, don't. But I want to know what this is. Let's talk about it. They usually start out with powerful or all-powerful. Say, okay, I like that. And then they usually go to forgiving. And I say, I've got to tell you, that was not sufficient for me. I had to have a God that was eager to forgive. Just forgiving wasn't going to do for a guy as guilty as I was. And you want forgiving, take that. But I had the anger to forgive, gentle, loving, creative. How about sense of humor? I want a God who loves me. I want God that laughs. How about a God who wants what's best for me and he knows what it is and by the way, clearly I don't. How about how about God's will is a good deal? That's a quote from my wife. How about a God whose will is a good deal? How about that? How's that sound? Okay, then what I'm going to ask you to do is what the scientists call a working hypothesis. What that means is we have reason to believe something may be true. We're going to apply it in all cases and just find out what happens. I'm not asking you to believe this. All my life religious people have been saying believe this, well how? Well just believe it, well however. I can't tell you how. this is a gift from my home group I'm going to tell you what faith is faith is hope with a track record faith is hope with a track record so let's start with hope you can see this is working for some of us won't you hope it'll work for you and I'm not going to ask you to fake oh I'm not even sure I can say it fake it till you make it God we faked it long enough no no no no no I'm not asking you to fake a thing I'm going to ask you to act as if How do you think you'd conduct yourself if you believe this? Conduct yourself in that manner. Let's find out what happens. Back to the working hypothesis, the reason we have to believe this may be true is we've just bracketed my concept of God and my program's working or you wouldn't ask me to sponsor you. So let's assume that this may be correct and operate from this perspective and just see what happens page 57 very top save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him seemingly he could not drink if he would God had restored his sanity this is one of the places where we talk about being restored to sanity not manageability but sanity what is this but a miracle of healing yet its elements are simple circumstances made him willing to believe in my case I worked myself into a crack I couldn't lie my way out of that's what that looks like on a guy like me He says he humbly offered himself to his maker. He didn't say, get me out of this and I'll never do it again. Give me some help here and I will take it from here. That wasn't it. He said, take me. Whatever you have in mind suits me. The term carte blanche means white paper. It means I am signing the blank check of the rest of my life at the bottom and handing it to God blank and saying, you can fill this in any way you want to. I've enjoyed all I can stand on my way. I'll take whatever you got in mind suits me that's what this says not a little help the story comes out of World War II at the end of the war in the Pacific Douglas MacArthur the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces is on the battleship Missouri to accept the surrender from the Japanese delegation they're all in their formal regalia and the head fell and I don't know who it was and the Japanese delegations walks up to the surrender documents and begins to read MacArthur says to him don't read it just sign it that's what I'm asked to do here I don't get to read it anymore I just get to sign it that's why that's all I do here it says he humbly offered himself to his maker then he knew even so has God restored us all to our right minds how's that for a promise to this man of revelation suddenly some of us grow into it more slowly but he has come to all who have honestly sought him I like the analogy that God is like the mother of a three year old playing hide and seek with her child where does she hide she hides where the child can find her All that child has to do is seek. This is my heavenly parent, and all I have to do is seek him. It's been my experience that it's that simple. When we drew near to him, he disclosed himself to us. Page 60. See that God could, and what if he were sought? Alright, could. So let's take a look at this God we've designed here. He's all powerful, so I say he could do anything. Says in would, well let's see. He is on my side. He wants what's best for me. He's gentle, loving, available to me, eager to forgive me. So I say he would and again if he were sought. It doesn't say if he was found. Item one, God is not lost. So it does not have to be found but simply sought. You want to rat him? Okay. And Bob is still an alcoholic. How do you approach God if you don't believe in him? How do you buy Alcoholics Anonymous if you don't believe in that? In the book earlier, and there is a solution on page 25. it talks about something that has to happen to us before we ever become willing to believe A would work before we'd ever even believe that there might be a God and this was true for me I was a hope-to-be atheist and it said if you go there is a solution almost none of us like the self-searching the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation but we saw that it really worked in others that might be the first awakening some of us ever see we'll have a friend or someone we knew is like us and their life will change we have ability to discount the people in AA as those people but what happens when it's one of your running partners gets sober, somebody you know that's like you. And then here's the thing that got me. And we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we've been living it. I believed that. I believed that before I ever believed in Alcoholics Anonymous or God. I believed in the helplessness and futability. Seven years of relapsing, seven years of doing everything thing i could do to turn it around and i keep still going down the tubes and it's getting progressively worse you know that in this progression of alcoholism as the years go on it gets worse and sometimes it gets to a point where you think to yourself it can't get any worse and you know what happens it gets worst and then the worst thing of all happens. It gets the same. Oh, then it's this, you're sick and you're trying to get well and you don't really get well and you get oblivion and you come to and you are sick and you try to get better and you can't really do anything. You're sick. It just becomes the same. And on page 152, it talks about what broke me. What made me come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as I'd been living it? What brought me to the jumping off place? And it says we get to a place we're unable to imagine life either with it or without it. In 1977, I was in a halfway house and I was staying sober week after week after week. Oh, it's bad. And I'm so depressed and lonely and bored. I remember in that period going to some old-timer at AA. I'm just getting at the end of my rope here, and I don't want to ruin my life again, but this sobriety stuff really has a lot to be desired, I'm telling you. And I said to this old-time, I said, you know, what do you do for fun now that you're not drinking? You know what he says to me? He says, oh, we go to a lot of meetings. Oh, no, come on. I said, well, yeah, but do you do anything else? He says, oh, twice a year we have an AA dance. You ever been to an AA Dance with untreated alcoholism? Oh, man, you'll remember why you used to drink quick. Because it's all of them and then there's you, you know. Oh, it's bad. And I talked to a guy on the phone that I'd been in detox with and he was back to drinking and man, I was over ready for some relief, I'm telling you. And he told me, he says, why don't you get a weekend pass? Come on down. He says, I got some tie stick. He said, I found a rock and roll bar with great bands, man. Come on down. There's dynamite women there. I'm over ready for some good times. You know, I've been a really good sport up to now. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to hurt nobody. A weekend pass, I mean, is that a lot to ask for a guy who's been not drinking all these months? But I got the weekend pass because I'm still a victim of an illusion that I could control and enjoy it. See, I think I'm going to have fun, and I'm gonna get away with it. I remember going down to meet him, and the best part of the whole run was the hour before it started. And that was true probably the last couple years. And I'm goin' down to him and excited. I'm gon' have some fun. I might get laid. I'm just gonna have some laughs, man. It's gonna be good. And I get to this bar, and I go in there, and it's a good bar, man. There's a band. It's a hot band. There's another pool room on the other side. It's just full of people. Oh, it's an wonderful bar. And I'm sitting at the bar, and I'm ordering those double shots of 100 proof with a beer back because when you only got a weekend, you got to get downtown now, right? And I am waiting for it to jump start because I want to have some fun. and it ain't jump-starting and all that's happening to me is the phenomenon of craving is on me, and I can't stop it. And it's one more and one more, and I'm sitting there and I'm starting to feel sorry for myself as these waves of self-pity start to come over me, and I start sinking into this depression as I look at the people that are having a good time that are laughing and carrying on, and I could remember when I was all about that and i can't get it back and it's like a window opens in the con in the delusion of the alcoholic occasionally where you can see the truth and the truth is this is as good as it gets this is it and i came off of that run and i uh i tried to i i ended up in a county jail facing two years in a state penitentiary for a hit and run dui in a stolen car and i had got I'm put into a treatment center in lieu of prison so they could observe me. And if I could do certain things, they were going to help me out and give me a break. And I couldn't do them. And I went on my last drunk, and I tried to kill myself. And I Went On My Last Drunk Because I Couldn't Stand Sobriety Anymore, and I Started Drinking Again, and It Ain't No Good. And I'm standing on this bridge trying to kill himself because drinking is awful and not drinking is evil. And I get into AA right after that. I come off that run, and I end up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it was when I got sober the last time. And in new and sobriety, people had asked me, counselors and people in AA who knew a little bit about me. I told them, and they knew that I was in and out. People ask you stuff like, well, what's different this time? And I just make stuff up, you know, because I don't know. Not really. You know, you hear the treatment center stuff. Well, I'm doing it this time for me. Like you've ever done anything that wasn't for you. You know, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. When was the last time you ever done something for you? And I don't know. And a guy gives me some box of books one day, novels that he'd done reading. And I started reading one of them and it blew my mind. And it was this account in this novel. It was not a recovery book, just a novel. It was an account of these scientists who were doing experiments on the human brain. And they discovered that in the human plane was a part, had a long Latin term, but they called it the pleasure center. It's the part of the human frame that allows you to experience the euphoria from alcohol and drugs. It's where you get high. So these scientists took these laboratory rats and they put two tiny wire filaments into the pleasure centre of the rat's brain. and then they would pass a mild, undetectable electric stimulus through those wires. It would stimulate the pleasure center, and the rat would get high. So what they did is they hooked up the juice to a pedal in the rat's cage, and the Ratwood learned he could hit the pedal and get high, so the ratwood just lay on the damn pedal. I mean, he doesn't eat, he does not sleep, he do not drink water, he does NOT even have sex. It is not now, baby, I am partying, he is hitting that pedal. and he'd hit that pedal till he died usually dehydration because he's not even drinking water he's just hitting the pedal now every alcoholic gets that oh we're pedal hitters you know i mean there's some i've told that story to watch people in the rooms eyes glaze over go yeah hit the pedal yeah right we get that but that's not what got me the scientists would get these rats and they'd wait until they were just about dead, usually from dehydration. And they'd turn the juice off. And now the rat hits the pedal and nothing happens. Hits it again and nothing happened. Hits again and again and after countless futile attempts to turn that juice back on, the rat gets it eventually that the party's over. There's no more juice. And instead of being able to go back to Jesus just being a rat, The rat curls up in a ball and lays on the floor of the cage to die. Because without the juice, there's nothing to live for. In 1978, I come to Alcoholics Anonymous like that rat. I didn't come here looking for sobriety. I didn'T come here lookIng for a spiritual way of life. Come on! If God, I don't even believe in God, but if God would have come before me and said, Bob, I'll give you one wish, it wouldn't have been sobriete. You know what the wish would have been? It's on the square. of partying like I had when I was 18 years old. Give me those three years, you can kill me at the end of them, but I want those three years. And instead I get a big book and a sponsor and a home group and 29 years later I sit here to tell you the most important thing I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous that AA is not about getting you to quit drinking. Matter of fact, there's not even any, there'S not a place in the book that even says quit. You want to quit drinkin'? Punch a cop, you'll quit for a while. Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to do one thing and one thing only. It's designed to turn the juice back on. It's design to awaken something inside you that had only ever been awakened when you were a young kid and you had five shots of tequila and you were lit up with your friends. And if AlcoholicsAnonymous doesn't do that for you, people like me aren't going to stay. This afternoon, we're going to go into the process in detail on how to turn the juice back on. That's really why we're here. Or as Scott said, the great promise of Alcoholics Anonymous, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. Sam, you want to quit? Yeah, we had originally planned...